Last year I saw a business owner hand-feeding a 40-page full color, double-sided internal document page by page into a printer. 3 days later I saw the printed pages of work sitting in the printer. It turned out the meeting for which this had been printed had been canceled.
That image has stuck with me. It has nothing to do with the actual issue of a meeting being canceled and everything to do with the way small offices actually function. And leak money. And that money could be going to better things.
Printing costs for businesses are seen as a slow leak of funds and are not realized until the end of year accounts are produced. The costs of toner, paper, energy to power printers and occasional call out to fix a jammed printer all get buried in the mind of a business owner as being too insignificant to worry about.
The toner trap (and how to stop falling into it)
My biggest frustration with the toner economy is that printer is sold to customer at very low cost but cost of the cartridges is very high. It is well known business model for many decades- razors and blades. In most cases customers are aware that they are being taken for a ride but still continue to purchase because it is perceived to be cheaper option in the long run then purchasing whole new printer.
A few adjustments that actually move the needle:
- Switch to draft mode for internal documents. The quality difference is barely noticeable; the toner savings are not.
- Use grayscale by default. Color should require a conscious decision, not be the automatic setting nobody remembers enabling.
- Check your printer’s toner yield stats honestly. A cartridge advertised for 2,000 pages rarely hits that number under real-world conditions. Plan accordingly.
- Be cautious with third-party cartridges that look like bargains. Some work fine. Others gum up the drum assembly and cost you far more in repairs than you saved at the checkout.
This all makes sense in the end though, most of this is already well known. So why isn’t everyone already doing this? The biggest printing cost driver for most small businesses is behavior. The behavior of employees printing things unnecessarily. We all know that if we print a document out, someone else will read it. But it’s harder to resist the urge to print out a 6 page email, and the employees of a small business are no exception.
Volume and habits matter more than hardware
Most of the cost of printing in small offices is the behavior around printing, rather than the cost of the printer itself. The biggest printer on the network is the CEO’s behavior around printing.
There is that person in every office who prints out documents to read on the train. There is the other person in the office who prints out spreadsheets, which they could just as easily read on screen. And then there is that third person, who no matter how many times you tell them, always reprints the same document.
First, print volume of print is a cultural issue, not one to immediately jump to printing solutions for. A simple print policy could cut print volume down by 20 to 30% within minutes without having to purchase more print equipment. Setting the default paper size for all print applications to letter/A4 (as opposed to legal/A5 or B5 for example) could see double sided printing become the default printing behavior for all printers in the office, and in addition getting staff to print only when absolutely necessary would also aid in reducing print volume.
Change printing habits in the office around by having a 5 minute chat with your team and then changing the default setting on the printer to single sided printing. So simple yet so effective to save a bucket load of cash printing out documents.
Energy costs are the quiet ones
A printer left on 24/7 for a year will consume a lot of electricity. Five printers left on all night for a year in an office will consume even more. Most energy efficient printers have a low TEC (Typical Electricity Consumption) and automatically switch to standby after a few minutes of inactivity. Make sure your printer has these features and is switched off after work.
As with volume, there are also large energy savings possible from using energy-efficient printing equipment. While not as large as volume savings, energy-efficient printing has improved dramatically in recent years and can provide substantial cost savings, especially when combined with reduced volume. When selecting a printer for your business, check the manufacturer’s web site for Typical Electricity Consumption (TEC) values for printers similar to the ones you are evaluating. Look for a printer with a low TEC value (less than 2 Watts standby). Also check to see if the printer automatically powers down after a few minutes of inactivity (not 30 minutes).
6. Cost of Downtime
Every hour spent fixing paper jams, warming up a printer or even calling printer support is a cost. You can’t put a price on it because by the time you have used that hour to work out the cost of all of all that time lost you will have forgotten. However that is exactly the kind of cost that you need to factor into your buying decision when it comes to a printer. Cheaper printers may seem like a good option at first but in the long run, a more expensive reliable model could save you a lot of money.
Reliable printing equipment is one of the greatest ways to save money by saving time. There are plenty of good quality business printers on the market which are designed to print for long hours, every day of the year. The very last thing you need is for your printer to pack up at the worst possible moment. So, search for the most reliable printing equipment and make sure it is from a reputable manufacturer, such as Toshiba for example. Then you can look forward to hours of consistent, efficient printing.
But compared to hours lost unjamming, waiting for warm up and on hold to support for broken printers, the cost of well chosen printing equipment is small, particularly where the printing equipment is used for long hours on a continuous basis.
| Factor | Low-cost, unreliable printer | Quality business printer |
| Maintenance frequency | High, often unexpected | Scheduled, predictable |
| Downtime per incident | Hours to days | Minutes, rarely |
| Staff time lost | Significant | Minimal |
| Total cost of ownership | Often higher despite low upfront price | Lower over 2-3 years |
The cost of a printer is generally stated to be the list price of the printer. However, there are many other costs that must be added over time to give a true figure for the cost of the printer. Here is a simple example to make the point: A less reliable printer that costs half as much to buy, may in the end actually cost more than a more expensive printer that prints one page at a time.
Maintenance: small habits, big savings
·Clean the drum frequently, changing it before it reaches the end of its life, where it will fail suddenly and require expensive repair;
·Replace print and copy consumables before they run out of life, where they will fail suddenly and require expensive repair;
·Ensure that the firmware on all printers is up to date. It is an unfortunate fact of life that most manufacturers fix efficiency bugs in their firmware updates but do not advertise them adequately.
This is part of the “hidden cost” that many under-estimate when buying office equipment. The cost of repairs, maintenance, and management of your printing devices is far greater than the initial purchase price. This part of the equation is highly underrated because of the lack of dramatic change that can occur by following a set of simple procedures and good habits on an ongoing basis.
As long as you’re paying attention to the issues that affect your toner budget earlier in the print life of your office’s printers and copiers then you can save yourself a bundle of cash in the long run by making a few simple changes to your print habits. For example only printing off a hard copy of a meeting memo if you’re certain that the meeting is going to go ahead.
