9 Tips to Help You Reduce Your Printing Costs

Whether you’re printing at home or at work, you’ll be conscious of the amount you’re spending on your printer ink. If you’re printing at home, naturally you will want to keep your costs down and if you’re printing at work, you’ll want to keep in your boss’s good books. As the technology improves within printing, the cost of manufacturing these cartridges will drop which in turn; have an effect on the retail prices. There are a few things though that can help you save money right now, all by cutting down the wastage of ink or toner.

Here are a few inside tips that I have learned over the years:

1. Reduce your font size and change your font style.

The simplest of changes can have the biggest effect. I recommend: Century Gothic font with size ‘10’ to get the best cost per page.

2. Don’t Bold everything!

Again, another small change but don’t overdo the bolded text within a document.

3. Compatible/Remanufactured products.

Depending on what you’re printing, consider buying compatible or remanufactured products. You can get a huge savings on these compared to the OEM’s, plus you’ll usually get a longer warranty.

4. Use print preview.

Instead of printing a spreadsheet to test whether it fits on one page or not, use the print preview option instead.

5. Look at your running cost. Need to upgrade your printer?

If you have a printer that’s 4 or 5 years old, consider buying a newer model or a different brand as the technology will no doubt have improved since you bought your current one. If you’re considering buying a new one, make so you spec it out and look at how much the consumables cost.

6. Double sided printing.

Save the paper, and print double-sided.

7. Use ‘shrink to fit’ function.

I use this a lot in excel. Instead of printing you spread sheets on two pages, use the ‘shrink to fit’ or ‘fit sheet to one page’ setting.

8. Print only the pages that you need.

Only print the things that you’re actually going to need and not the ones that will go straight in the bin after wards. If you don’t need to print it, PDF it!

9. Print mono instead of full colour.

If you want to print a document like an invoice to keep on record for instance, doesn’t waste colour and use a mono printer

There you have it, 9 tips to consider before you press the print button. Happy saving!