An important element of running a successful business is keeping your costs as low as possible, as reducing overheads means you are more likely to make a profit. However, not all costs are the same for every company as it depends on the day-to-day functions of your business.
That being said, typical costs usually include renting premises, utilities and paying staff, but another common cost that applies to the majority of businesses is office supplies, including printing. Although printing is a necessary cost for most businesses, there are ways that you save money. Let’s take a look at few here.
Print Only What You Need
One of the biggest ways that people waste money when printing is printing too much. People often print extras ‘just in case’. This wastes printer ink, uses more electricity and will mean your paper usage is much greater than is necessary. As a result, your overheads will rocket. Overprinting is completely unnecessary. If you have documents saved on your computer and you haven’t printed enough, then simply print some more as and when you need them.
Choose Good Ink Cartridges
Choosing the right ink cartridges is important and it’s one of the simplest ways to keep your printing costs down. Buying cheap ink cartridges isn’t always the best way to save cash. It is possible they will use more ink and run out quickly meaning you will need to replace them sooner. As a result, you will spend more money in the long run.
It is also essential that you buy ink cartridges that are 100% compatible with your printer. For example, if you have a HP printer, you should naturally use only compatible HP ink cartridges. It may be common sense, but many offices make mistakes here and those incompatible cartridges can often get left in a drawer for years – a complete waste of money!
Buy Decent Printers
Although the initial outlay for a decent printer is more than buying a cheaper alternative, over time you are likely to spend more money. This is because many cheaper printers use combined colour ink cartridges. The problem with this is that when one colour runs out, all the colours need replacing regardless of whether you have used them or not. If you opt for a more expensive printer from the outset, you will be able to replace the colours individually with ink cartridges as and when they are needed. Furthermore, a cheaper printer will not necessarily stand the test of time, especially if your printer use is quite high in your office.
Use Draft Mode
Most printers have different setting options and there is usually one for print quality. For marketing materials, you may prefer the highest quality of printing, but for general day-to-day printing, this may not be so important. Opting for draft or eco-mode means that the printer sprays less ink from the ink cartridges every time you print a document. Typically, this can conserve between 5 and ten per cent of the ink you use and means you will save money by reducing the number of times your ink cartridges need replacing.
Check Work and Layout
Reprinting significantly adds to printing costs and the most common reason for reprints is usually human error. Not checking the facts before clicking on print can be a costly mistake. Similarly, not thinking about the layout of a document before sending to print can have similar consequences. If your document ends with a page that only has one line of text on it, you should look for ways to format the layout so that you do not waste the extra paper. Clicking on return at the end of a document can sometimes result in the last page of your document showing nothing but a header and footer. This can be avoided by clicking on your document after the last word and pressing the forward delete button to remove the additional space and shortening your document by one page.
Printing costs are an important part of your business overheads and keeping these to a minimum will keep your overall costs down and improve your chances of running a successful and profitable business. Choosing the right printers and ink cartridges, printing only what you need, using draft mode and checking your work are just some of the simple measures you can take to save money on your printing costs.
