11 Simple Ways to Reduce Printing Costs for Your Business

Printing is no doubt an essential part of a business’ day-to-day operations. The high costs of owning and operating a printer, however, is often a major concern, especially for smaller businesses. Research shows that each employee’s printing habits cost a company an average of $725 per year (per employee). For a company of 150 employees, printing costs would amount to $108,750 and this accounts for 5-15 percent of all business expenses.

It‘s likely that your company is spending more than it needs to on printing. But by applying a few simple yet effective strategies, you can drastically reduce printing costs:

1. Save file to PDF instead of printing on paper

Unless your document needs to be in hard copy, always opt to use the digital version. Once you’ve finalised the document, instead of selecting a printer, select “Save as PDF”. To share the document, you can email it as an attachment or upload it into the cloud. Not only are digital documents easier to access and edit, but you can also distribute them to multiple people without using ink or paper. By using a company-wide document naming policy and storage system such as SharePoint, you can also reduce time spent on locating documents.

2. Print in black and white as much as possible

The cost of colour ink cartridges is significantly higher than the cost of black and white ink cartridges. This means printing in colour can cost as much as eight times more than printing in black and white. Every time you print in black and white, you save a few cents and that adds up quickly over time.

3. Print two pages to one sheet

By printing on two pages to one sheet i.e. using duplex printing, you can cut paper use by 50 percent. Use duplex printing, whenever possible, especially when printing documents for internal use.

4. Reduce the size of your margins

In Microsoft Word, change your printing margin preference from the default 1.25 inches to 0.75 inches. A study has shown that even with this small change you can reduce your paper usage by 4.75 percent. In other words, reducing your paper margins can increase your profit margins.

5. Use an ink-saving font

According to this research, you can also use specific fonts to reduce printing costs. Test have shown that Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Ecofont are among the most economical fonts and Arial tends to use more ink for printing. You can save 31 percent in printing costs simply by using Century Gothic instead of Arial.

6. Preview before you print

Before you print, take a few seconds to see the document in Print Preview. Delete any unnecessary gaps and pages and reduce image and text sizes. Check for any layout issues and typo errors so you don’t have to print again.

7. Print only what you need

When you’re printing web pages, check that you’re only including the sections you need. Adjust the content to fit on as few pages as possible. In the Print Dialogue box, specify only the pages you want to print.

8. Scan instead of copying

Instead of copying a document to share it with other people, you can scan and email it to them directly from your multi-function printer. Not only can you save paper and ink, but you also give the person easy access to the document from their email.

9. Pause with the print button

If you click the “Print” button and nothing happens, avoid clicking it again. First, check for any printer notifications on your computer screen. If you don’t find any then go and check the printer. It may be needing a refill of paper or ink. If you had clicked the “Print” button numerous times instead of checking for the problem, you would have wasted paper and ink on copies you didn’t need.

10. Put your printer to sleep

As with most electronic devices, copiers and printers consume energy even when they’re not being used. You can save a significant amount of your energy bill by setting your printing device to enter sleep mode when it is not in use and when your office is closed, like during weekends and holidays.

11. Use Managed Print Services (MPS)

Under MPS, you have an experienced team working to ensure that your office printing practices are as efficient as possible. The use of MPS can cut operating cost by up to 30% as the team will troubleshoot issues, offer preventative maintenance and reduce costly, unplanned downtime on your printing equipment.

At Insight IT, we provide MPS as part of our IT support services. We optimise, maintain and monitor your printing environment to limit your print-related costs so your business can focus more resources on other priorities. If you want to find out more about our services, you can contact us here.