Paper Economics: How to Slash Printing Costs in Your Office

Does your business rake up an insane amount of expenses from printing alone?

As a business owner, cutting costs where you can is a great way to save more money. You can use these funds for other things that might help your business grow. If you want to cut down on your business’ printing costs, keep reading.

Did you know that ink is more expensive than human blood? Human blood costs $1500 per gallon, while black printer ink costs $2700 a gallon.

With these prices, you should start rethinking your printing habits. If your organization prints a ton of documents, your printing costs can spiral out of control. Here’s how you can lower the cost of your business’ printing and make it more manageable.

Make a Quota for Printing Costs

All businesses need a plan that includes a budget. Printing is one of those costs that you can track and manage with ease. But most business owners are unaware of how much money they can save on printing costs.

A great way to reduce the cost of printing is to have strict print quotas. This helps ensure that your workers are using your printers in an efficient manner. Once a quota is in place, workers will learn and make ways to avoid using up the print quota that they have.

This will make everyone more mindful about how much printing they actually need. In some situations, it is also appropriate to have a paying system for printing. You may also use a card system that identifies how much printing allocation they have left.

For instance, workers might start emailing soft copies of documents when they can. Emailing and using soft copies are great ways to cut down on your printing costs.

Reduce Printing in Color

If you want to save on printing costs, then colored printing is your number one enemy. Printing in color requires more cartridges of at least four different colors. This can drive your printing costs through the roof.

When printing text documents, encourage workers to use black and white printing. Only use colored printing when necessary, such as printing images.

Color printing is also more time-consuming compared to black and white printing.

This longer time does not only result in longer waiting time wasted but also power costs. Tell employees to print text documents, tables, and graphs in black and white. Text documents should not have color unless it is necessary.

A great way to reduce the use of colored printing is to mandate the use of monochrome printers. These printers only print in black and white and save you more money. If you don’t need to present a document in person, you can also email it to save on printing.

Encourage Using Both Sides of the Paper

Most people use only one side when printing. This is a wasteful practice and takes up more resources than needed. You should always encourage employees to use double-sided printing whenever they can.

In simple terms, double-sided printing means the printer will print on both sides of the paper. This alone will save you a ton in printing paper costs which are expensive. Most printers offer a duplex printing option which allows you to print on both sides.

By using both sides of your paper, you help save money for your business and help the environment. This is because paper takes up a lot of resources like trees, energy, and water. Single printing often leaves one side of the paper unused, which is wasteful.

If you want to print your text document on both sides, go to your “File” tab. After that, you have to click “Print”. A shortcut to this is pressing “Ctrl + P” on your keyboard.

Once the “Print” window is open, go on “Settings.” Under “Settings” you should click on the “Print One Sided” option. Once clicked, it should show the option of “Print on Both Sides.”

If not, you should enable duplex printing.

Enable Duplex Printing

Duplex printing is automatic, which means your printer will print on both sides for you. With this, you won’t have to get the paper and switch the sides when printing. Before you do this, you need to check if your printer has the option of duplex printing.

To check for the duplex printing option, click “Ctrl + P ” on your keyboard and wait for your printer window. After that, click “Properties” and open your “Device Settings.” Click the plus sign next to the installable options, which will expand the list.

This will show the option of “Duplex Unit,” which you can install from your drop-down list. After that, click “Apply” and then click “OK.” This should enable the duplex printing option for your printer unit.

Reduce Your Document Margins

The margin on all Microsoft Word documents is set at 1.25 inches by default. The bigger the margins you have on your document, the more paper and space you waste. This contributes to increased printing costs.

While some may opt to use higher margins for formality or design purposes, it is not always needed. If you want to lessen the cost of your printing, it is best to reduce the margins in your documents.

A safe bet for margin choice is 0.75 inches on all sides of your paper. Doing this should save you at least 4.75% on paper usage. Another practice you should encourage in the workplace is reducing using bleed margins.

When printing images, there is no need to have space between the image you need to print and the edge of the paper. You can opt to not have any margins or space in your image and the edge of the paper using bleed designs. Bleeds are more pleasing to the eyes but not always necessary.

Magazine printers use this to achieve that full image on paper look. But regular printers need a space or small margins on all sides for the grippers on your printer. This makes it easier to feed the sheet through your machine and print it.

This is why using bleed designs is more expensive. Not only do they use up more ink, but they also need certain machines to achieve them. So if you want to save costs, avoid using bleed margins on paper.

Encourage the Ink Saving Fonts

The font you use has a great impact on how much money you spend on printing. A simple font change can help you save 29.24% of printing costs. Traditional companies use the fonts Arial for their text documents.

But what if we told you there were fonts out there that will not only help save you cost but also help the environment? The font Arial takes up a lot of ink, but there are fonts like Times New Roman and Century Gothic.

The simple switch from Arial to Century Gothic helps lessen your ink usage by at least 30%. Century Gothic is an ink-saving and environmental font available for free. This light and thin font helps lower your ink use and business’ printing budget.

Always Double Check Before Your Print

Have you ever printed a long document, only to reread it and discover a typo on the first line? Having to reprint documents is a great waste of resources. That is why you should always preview and double-check a document before printing it.

This might take a few minutes or even hours, but it is better than reprinting a whole batch of papers over one mistake. Sometimes, the printed document is different from what we had in mind, so it is important to preview it. The print preview is not only great for checking if the format and layout are correct but for other things as well.

The preview can help you see any typographical errors you might have made. A preview can also give you an idea if you should upsize or downsize your font to fit your paper better. You can also double-check any page breaks and edit spacing for continuity.

Print as Draft Copy

If a document is important for personal filing but won’t be seen by others, then print it as a draft copy. This is perfect for when you need to submit a document before you can do a final edit. The “Draft Copy” option is accessible on some word-processing applications and printers.

This removes high-quality formats and graphs from the printed product to save ink. This is because draft copies are used for rough copies for those who need to edit documents using a hard copy. There is also another option like “Draft Copy” which can be achieved through “Draught Mode”.

Enable Draught Mode

“Draught Mode” can be selected from your printer’s settings. This mode makes your printer print documents in low quality. Printing in low quality helps save you a lot of ink or toner compared to the usual high-quality printing.

Switch to Toner

Toner is a much cheaper alternative to ink. Toners are powder-based mediums used for printing, much like ink.

Both ink and toners come in a variety of colors. For example, if you have a laser printer, you would need black, magenta, cyan, and yellow toner for colored printing. Toners function the same as regular ink but with more advantages.

Here are some of them.

Faster and More Precise Printing

Toners work with laser printers. These printers have a faster printing time than traditional ink-spraying printers. This will help save time and even lessen the number of printers needed due to its efficiency.

Laser printers that use toners are also precise and can provide the same or even better quality. Like inkjet printers, laser printers can print sharp, high-quality images. These are also perfect for printing text documents and other uses.

Better for the Environment

Ink often comes in plastic and disposable cartridges that need to be refilled. This is wasteful as these refills need to be done even before the ink cartridge is empty. Inkjet cartridges are also prone to being dry when not closed, leading to waste.

Not using your inkjet printer will also make its ink dry and unusable. These ink cartridges are also prone to clogging, which means you need to clean and remove the clog. This can further reduce the yield of your ink cartridge.

In contrast, toner cartridges will never dry out, as toners are already in powder form. This makes toner far more long-lasting than ink, which is perfect for those who don’t print often. Toners also have a higher print yield per cartridge compared to inkjet printers.

These make toners the best printer option on the market for those in an office setting. Toners are a great investment, even if they cost more upfront. This is because you reduce waste and enjoy a higher print yield than with ink.

Where to Get Toners

Do you want to switch to toners but don’t know where to get high-quality ones? Then go to PremiumToners.com. Premium Toners offer toners for a wide variety of brand-compatible cartages.

Premium Toners have toner cartridges made to be compatible with printer units. These brands include Xerox, HP, Canon, and more. Premium Toners offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, meaning you can refund your toner.

They also offer free shipping for orders priced at $49 and above.

Save on Printing Costs Today

Going digital is often the best way to reduce printing costs, but it’s not always an option for some businesses. Here are some things to try to reduce your printing costs.

Do you want to know more about how you can help your business save money? If you want to know where to get more tips, we’ve got you covered! Check out our other blog posts to discover more guides.