When it comes to saving money as a business, one aspect that almost always gets overlooked is printing costs. After investing in an office printer, no matter how basic or industrial, it’s often then left to run and use however employees like. Not only can this become extremely wasteful, but it can also massively rack up your monthly or annual costs.
If you’re looking to reduce your printing costs, aside from simply using low-quality ink and paper, we’ve compiled a list of smart strategies you can implement right away to start saving some pounds.
1. Avoid Colour Printing
Colour ink is vastly more expensive than black ink as the technology used to make coloured ink is more advanced and requires more work. Colour printing also requires more time and uses more energy and power too. Unless it’s required to print in colour, for leaflets, posters or other marketing material, for example, stick to only printing in black and white.
2. Use Print Management Software
If you have a medium or large company with multiple printers around the office, you’ll greatly benefit from a print management software. This software will allow you to control and monitor your business’s printing habits, print from any device to any printer, provide print audit and system activity logs, increase security and, most importantly, minimise waste and your company bills. A managed print service is essential for all businesses.
3. Use Double-Sided Printing
For any internal documents, we recommend turning on the two-sided setting to maximise the use of a sheet of paper. You may also see a ‘multiple pages per sheet’ option on your printer, which will fit in 2-4 pages per sheet. This will considerably cut down your paper usage and your costs.
4. Scan Documents Rather than Copy
If you have a multi-functional printer that can print, copy and scan documents, make the most of the scanning function. Scanning a document, rather than creating a copy to leave on someone’s desk, will be able to be emailed over to the employee directly from the printer. This will not only help reduce costs and paper wastage, but it’ll give the employee access to the document anywhere they have access to the internet and their emails.
5. Reduce Your Margins
Surprisingly, your page margins can make a big difference in your paper usage. Simply reducing the margins from 1.25″ to 0.75″ allows you to fit more lines on a single page while still being perfectly readable. Removing double-line spacing will also avoid unnecessary paper wastage.
6. Proofread Before Printing
To avoid printing multiple copies of the same document, always proofread your files before hitting the print button. The last thing you want is to print several pages only to find an abundance of small spelling or grammatical errors. To spot any formatting errors, such as unwanted spaces, gaps, image sizes or misplaced page breaks, use the print preview option to check how it looks.
7. Print Only What You Need
If you’re printing a website page, take the extra time to copy and paste the text that you need into a separate document to print instead. This avoids using colour ink and unnecessary pages to print out a website’s ads, banner images or any other images within the page. The same goes for a large document with multiple pages. If you only need a small section, copy and paste what you need into a single page rather than printing the entire book. Or, select only the page you need to print in the printing options.
8. Stop Hitting the Print Button
We’ve all experienced the impatience and frustration of hitting the print button and nothing happening, so hitting it again…and again. But if you want to reduce your printing costs, it’s time to think smarter. Rather than repeatedly clicking the print button, check your computer for any notifications and then check the print queue. More often than not, the reason why something isn’t printing is due to a lack of ink or incorrectly loaded paper.
9. Put Your Printer to Sleep
When not in use overnight or over the weekend, put it into sleep mode. This will not only help save a lot of energy and keep your running costs low, but it’s also much better for the planet. Some printers may have a built-in timer setting or allow you to configure it to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, which is the ideal solution.
10. Use Eco-Friendly Printing Solutions
You can implement several eco-friendly printing solutions that will help save money and are good for the planet. Certain fonts are more economical than others as they use less ink for printing. These fonts include:
- Century Gothic
- Times New Roman
- Courier
- Garamond
- Verdana
- Calibri
Reducing the font size, avoiding big headings and not using the bold or underline features are also all things you can do to save money and be more eco-friendly.
Recycled printer paper is another eco-friendly solution that typically costs less than newly made paper, and it’s often impossible to tell the difference between the quality of the two. If you’re in need of a new office printer, whether you’re upgrading for current demand or just starting a new business, we partner with leading manufacturers and have a large supply of office printers available. Take a look at our office printers range for more information.