5 Easy Ways To Manage Business Print Costs

Managing costs is always a top priority for business owners. But as many economists are anticipating a recession, there’s an additional incentive for many business owners and procurement managers to get creative. 

Here’s a bit of good/bad news, depending on how you look at it. Unmanaged printing expenses can add up to between 1–3% of an organization’s total revenue. There’s a huge opportunity for savings there, and better yet, print savings can go hand-in-hand with more room, easier supply ordering, and better data privacy. 

Here are five simple ways to reduce those costs!

1. Optimize Purchasing and Inventory 

Your office can better manage the cost of operating a fleet of devices by establishing protocols for purchasing new supplies and developing a printer inventory. To do this, record the printer makes and models that are scattered throughout the building. An inventory of devices makes it easier to track the types of supplies needed for different machines in the office.

Once you know what you need, uncover what supplies you have in storage and use those first. When your stock of supplies runs out, select one person in your office to be responsible for purchasing new supplies (more on this in #3).

2. Streamline Your Machines

Take it from a managed print services provider: one of the most common causes of unnecessarily high business printing costs is excessive personal printers. Unless they are vital to the daily productivity of that individual or their work requires high confidentiality, personal printers should be minimized. 

Additionally, streamlining operations with a multifunction printer in a centralized location can lower costs as compared to multiple, separate machines (printers, faxes, copiers, scanners) situated throughout the office and used infrequently. As a bonus, eliminating unnecessary devices can save quite a bit of space.

How Reducing Devices Saves Money

• Lower energy costs
• Employees are less likely to print unnecessarily when they have to walk to a printer
• Fewer devices also means less service and maintenance and fewer supplies to order and manage

3. Select A Point Person

When all employees are allowed to purchase ink, toner, and paper, there is little to no accountability for wasted supplies or incorrect orders.

Putting one person in the office in charge of maintaining print supplies eliminates this issue and also helps protect your office from toner pirates and other office supply scams. Toner pirates sound silly, but the damage they do to small to midsize businesses is anything but.

Back in 2019, one toner pirate admitted that in just one year, he conned businesses into buying $126 million worth of toner from him at grossly inflated prices, and threatened them with hefty “restocking fees” if they attempted a return. 

4. Don’t Overlook the Small Things 

Enhance the cost-efficiency of printing throughout your office with a series of relatively small adjustments: 

• Set your defaults to black-and-white printing and 2-sided printing 
• Encourage your staff to use ink-conscious fonts whenever possible and reduce page margins on text-heavy documents
• Encourage your staff to preview their document to catch obvious errors before initiating a print job

5. Ask a Managed Print Services Provider for Help

Many managed print service (MPS) providers, including Marco, will offer a complimentary print assessment to help you identify where your money is really going. Just following the tips we’ve outlined in this blog should help you save quite a bit, but if your print fleet is large or your business operates in multiple locations, it might be best to get help from a pro. 

Depending on which provider you choose, they might also talk to you about additional measures you can take to reduce print waste and increase print security at the same time, like print tracking and secure print release software. And if you decide to have a provider manage your fleet for you, you’ll save even more on service and repair costs and reduce the burden on your internal IT team. Our clients typically save up to 30% on print costs, and get print security at no additional charge.