Printing and photocopying costs can creep up on any budget over time. Whether you own your printing and photocopying machines or lease them, your costs per print add up and could be leading to major waste – and reductions in profitability! In fact, mismanaging your printers and photocopiers could be costing you up to 3% of your total budget. How do you control these costs? Here are 8 easy/free ways to reduce printing and photocopying costs in your business!

The Obvious One: Print in Black and White

Unless you’re regularly producing documents that include photos or color-centered graphics, print in black and white to see huge savings. Decide when you need to show full-color photos and graphics and when you’re just putting the copy in front of your team. If you’ve been using color to emphasize terms or words in your printing, consider using the bold or italic text setting instead. Whether you’re leasing your equipment or you own it, black and white printing can save up to 12 cents per page – adding up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year.

The Most Important One: Go Digital As Often As Possible!

It’s the 21st century! When you’re planning work meetings and internal projects, take your documents digital. You can do that in a number of ways. Save paper and print costs by saving your documents as a PDF file and sending them via email. Your colleagues and business partners will appreciate that the file is close to hand – and doesn’t take up file space! Digital documents are much more convenient – and they cost infinitely less to produce, save, and store. You can also scan physical documents with a multifunctional printer and stop the paper trail in its tracks! When it’s time for your meeting, invite team members to bring a laptop, tablet, or other device to keep their documents organized and out of the print queue. 

The Pragmatic One: Print Double-Sided

When you have to have physical documents, consider making them double-sided to cut down on paper waste. Especially with internal documents, printing two-sided copies (even if the original is one-sided) will save you tons of paper over time. Even external and customer-facing documents can be formatted for two-sided printing. You’ll save on paper and the space needed to store those documents in the office! 

The “I Didn’t Know That” One: Mind Your Fonts

You might not be thinking about the weight of the letters in your default font – but that changes today! Some fonts use more ink or toner than others. Arial font, in particular, is a huge ink and toner hog. By contrast, the best fonts to use are Times New Roman, Century Gothic, and Ecofont. In fact, tests comparing Century Gothic and Arial fonts showed that Century Gothic produced a 31% savings over Arial. That might not seem like a big deal, but a 31% savings in your ink and toner costs over time can really add up to huge savings!

The Business Savvy One: Centralize Your Printing

If your business or office setting includes dozens of printers or features a small printer at each desk, you’re wasting a lot of money. Each of those machines requires ink, toner, and/or other maintenance over time. A great first step to staunch the profit loss is to centralize printing, scanning, copying, and other functions in shared office machines. Your team will gladly trade the relative convenience of printing at their desks for the functionality and usability of an office machine. Multifunction printers will allow them to get their work done more quickly and easily and will save your business money! And with managed print services installed and set up by your professional office equipment and business machine professionals, you’ll be able to control print costs and monitor where your greatest inefficiencies are occurring. 

Call Central Business Equipment to Optimize Your Business!

Our professional sales and service teams are here to help you optimize the printing and photocopying processes in your business. With decades of experience and the best in office equipment and business machines available to you, we can help identify inefficient practices and centralize your printing and photocopying. We can even help design a managed print service to bring ultimate efficiency and cost-effectiveness to bear for your company. Call or visit us today for a free consultation!