Let Your Office Equipment Help You Cut Printing Costs

With the average knowledge worker cranking out 12,000 documents per year, it’s little wonder that printing costs fall just behind rent and employee salaries for many organizations. The good news is that there are effective ways to reduce printing costs, and most of them deliver other benefits into the bargain.

Smart Printing Basics

1. In most situations, printing is a means to an end, and employees often don’t take the extra time required to get it right the first time. Solutions like print preview let users double-check for problems with margins, typographical errors, fonts, and more. This simple step taken on your office equipment interface can save thousands of print do-overs in a year’s time.

2. Do your employees print on the back of the paper whenever possible? Automatic duplexing is a two-sided printing solution that is especially helpful when printing lengthy manuals and reports.

3. Internal memos and other documents not headed for the CEO or an important client can be printed in draft mode or grayscale. Both features are standard on today’s copiers and office equipment and are a valuable cost-saving solution.

4. Paperless solutions found on your multifunction system can help employees bypass printing altogether. Cloud storage and document management solutions both allow users to distribute and collaborate on documents without printing.

5. Many documents should not be printed in the first place, including web pages, emails, and documents for personal use. Rules-based printing lets business managers set restrictions to reduce frivolous printing.

6. Do your employees know how many documents they print in a given month? Print accountability tracks usage and sets quotas to keep unnecessary printing in check.