Printers are an essential part of daily business, and often, business owners struggle with ways to reduce the costs associated with printing office documents. Here are a few tips that will help keep printing costs in check.
1. Set the print quality to its lowest setting for day-to-day printing. Most printers automatically default to high-quality printing to make sure the pages come out looking good. However, these high-quality images require a lot of ink or toner which can cost you a pretty penny over the life of your printer.
For most print jobs, the lowest quality setting will work just fine.
When you need a sharper print job, you simply change the setting for that one document. How to change your printer’s settings varies depending up on the type of printer.
In Windows, go to the “Start” menu and click on “Control Panel.” Choose “Printers and Faxes,” right click on the printer you wish to change and choose “Properties.” While you’re there, set the default to black and white to save on color ink and toner too. If black and white is fine for most day-to-day print jobs, you will save you a bundle on color ink.
2. Print more on every page. This will save ink as well as paper costs. Reduce the font size in a document by a point of two In just one year, going from 12 point to 9 point type, could save 3-5 reams of paper, per user.
3. Don’t let your inkjet printer go for more than a few days without use. If it sits for long periods of time, the tiny jets in the printer cartridge can dry up causing print jobs to have white streaks. Correcting this causes a large amount of ink to be used. And for laser printer users, turn off the printer when it won’t be used for a period of time. Keeping the printer’s fuser hot takes a lot of energy.
4. Clean your printer frequently. Faint output, unprinted lines running across the page, or streaks on your printouts can indicated clogged nozzles or a dirty printer. Check your user’s guide for the recommended cleaning procedure for your printer.
5. Refill your cartridges. You can buy kits and do this yourself or you can buy refilled cartridges. The quality is just as good as new, but the cost is much lower. Plus, you’re helping keep old cartridges out of the landfill.
6. Buy a laser or solid ink printer. Inkjet printers cost significantly more per page than laser printers. If you do a lot of printing, a laser or solid ink printer is an economical investment.
For example, this newsletter is printed on a Xerox Phaser 7400 color printer. The output is amazing, the printer is fast, and best of all, the cost per print is extremely affordable.