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Top tips for cutting your printing costs

Written by: Elizabeth Young

Article Overview: The cost of printing can be difficult to assess and you may find you are wasting money unnecessarily in this difficult to control area of your business. By taking a few easy steps you can cut your costs dramatically!

Top tips for cutting your printing costs

1. Take time to assess your requirements before choosing your printer
Careful choice of the type and number of printer to suit your requirements is a fundamental starting point. Remember that one of the most effective ways of reducing printing costs is to do away with personal desktop machines and share printers on your network. You can do this in several ways:

Any printer attached to a Windows PC can be shared. Open the Printer properties, click on the Sharing tab and tick the option marked Share this printer. Other PCs will then be able to browse to the shared printer, although it will only be available when the host PC is switched on. The local user may also notice some slowing down when large or complex documents are being printed.

For a larger network, attach the printers to a network file server or set up a dedicated print server PC or, even better, a custom print server appliance. Dedicated print servers cost very little and have many advantages. They are small, with no moving parts to go wrong, and some even support wireless networking, allowing printers to go almost anywhere. They are easy to set up and in many cases will accept print jobs from a variety of computers so that, for example, Windows PCs, Apple Macs and Unix or Linux users can all share the same printers.

2. Choose your printer on the Total Cost of Ownership rather than on purchase price!
Don’t forget that the cost of a printer comes from both the capital cost and the ongoing running costs. So make sure you look beyond the price tag in the showroom and focus on the Total Cost of Ownership. You will regret it if you don’t! In order to make an informed choice you need to obtain two pieces of essential information for each printer that interests you – the purchase price and the average print cost per page thereafter.

When assessing cost per page, printer manufacturers provide estimates based on the area printed – usually 5% coverage. Don’t forget that, especially if you are printing colour pictures, coverage will be substantially more than this. Also make sure the breakdown given to you by the manufacture includes all other consumables as well.

You will find independent, comparative figures for Total Cost of Ownership for many laser printers on TonerTopUp's informative website.

3. Refill existing laser cartridges instead of buying new each time!
Remember that the cost of new original cartridges can be very high, especially for colour printers. This is how manufacturers make their money – they sell their printers at very low prices and then often charge you more than the cost of the printer for replacement cartridges! So when your first laser printer cartridge runs out (or your first set of cartridges in the case of colour laser printers), think about refilling rather than replacing. To see if refill toner is available for your printer visit TonerTopUp's informative website.

Most laser printer cartridges can be refilled at least two or three times before other components wear out. They are often in perfect working order when the initial toner runs out and have plenty of life left in them!

When laser printer manufacturers estimate cartridge life they use a nominal 5% coverage. This is for a typical typed page. But if pictures are being printed as well, the coverage is normally well over the 5% coverage, indeed according to a Hewlett Packard study, the average coverage per colour of their colour laser printers is around 16%. This means that when the toner runs out, many colour cartridges have done only a third of their estimated life span. It is therefore quite usual for a cartridge last for several refills.

For many laser printers, refilling is just a matter of removing a filler plug and pouring the powder in. Even if there is no filler plug, it generally only takes a few minutes to refill a cartridge using a simple tool to access the toner compartment. It is not messy and you can get excellent quality printing this way.

Inkjet printers can be more problematical when it comes to refilling. The process is often messy and the quality more variable. It is hard to be sure it will work as you have to contend with blocked nozzles and pressure differences. However while you may be able to buy an inkjet colour printer for less than £50, you can be sure that you will have to pay substantially more than this for replacement cartridges.

4. Buy remanufactured cartridges instead of original ones!
When a cartridge does need replacing, buy remanufactured cartridges rather than an original make one. This will cost you much less and, although not as beneficial environmentally as refilling, is certainly better for the planet than buying new cartridges and contributing unnecessarily to our landfill problems.

5. Reduce the content of printed material to fewer sheets!
Print double-sided where possible. This reduces printer wear and of course cuts your paper costs. If your printer does not print on both sides, look at the balance between the cost of a duplex unit and the savings you will make.

If you have to print out draft documents, use a small font or the shrink to fit/zoom option available with many software packages.

6. Use mono where possible rather than colour!
Print internal documents and those that are purely for textual information in black and white where possible. This will keep your costs down significantly.

7. Cut out unnecessary background printing!
When printing web pages that have background images or display light text on a dark background, economise on your toner by choosing not to print these background images and colours. So, if you are only interested in printing the information on a web page, turn off background printing by going to Internet Explorer, select Tools/Internet Options and click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to the section for Printing and then make sure that the Print background colours and images box is unchecked.

By turning off the background printing, you will have the added advantage that your web pages will print more quickly and the text will generally be more legible.

When printing presentations, it is more economical to set PowerPoint to NOT print the backgrounds as this uses up a huge amount of colour toner. The background is designed for the viewing of projected images and text, but this is not necessary and indeed can get in the way when looking at printed copies.

8. Long runs are more economical than repeated short runs!
Short print runs wear out cartridges more quickly than long print runs. This is especially important if you are hoping to refill empty cartridges yourself. Cartridges used for long print runs can be expected to last three times as long as those used for printing single pages.

9. Send electronic documents where possible!
Don’t forget that you can reduce printer costs by not printing at all unless you really have to! Email PDF documents or share documents on the server or website rather than using paper wherever possible. In other words don’t print!

10. Save electricity by turning your printer off when not in use!
Remember to turn off your printer at night when not in use. Also try to switch it off if you are not using it in the day for any length of time, i.e. in the lunch hour.

Extra tip!
Don’t print labels on a colour laser printer because of the danger of damaging a drum with a label that has peeled off its backing in the four pass process. Once a label has stuck to the drum, the drum is not usable and has to be replaced, usually at a higher cost than a replacement printer! For similar reasons, never print self-adhesive envelopes in a laser printer as the glue on the envelopes will be released on to the printer drum and will damage it in the same way as a label.

Presented by Elizabeth Young of TonerTopUp
TonerTopUp supply refill toner for laser printers, copiers and fax machines.

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