The Key to Saving Time and Money as a Digital Printing Company

Simple Ways To Lower Printing Costs

As a business, you continuously track costs for different tasks such as marketing and recruitment. But have you ever considered monitoring your printing costs? Now, you might be missing out on incredible savings if you haven’t done so. Let’s share valuable tips to help you reduce printing costs

Seven Ways To Save Resources as a Digital Printing Company

1. Go Easy on Color Ink Cartridges

Color ink carts are expensive. That’s not all. Color printing, compared to monochrome, takes more time and energy hence higher utility bills. To lessen your costs, it would be best to implement an internal office rule to use black and white printing at all times. Color printing should only be for specific documentation.

2. Encourage Resource Efficiency

One-sided printing is a common issue in offices and a significant factor behind high printing expenses. Encouraging double-sided, a.k.a. duplex printing, makes it possible to lower paper costs by half.

As a first step, ensure your digital printing machine has the duplex feature. Next, set the double-sided printing option as the default. Other than reducing costs, duplex printing reduces your company’s impact on the environment by reducing your paper and energy usage.

3. Shrink Paper Margins

Typically, the margin setting for Word documents is at 1.25″.  That said, some users prefer larger margins and bleed designs for presentation purposes. Here’s the issue, using wide margins is another reason behind your high printing costs, as they reduce the space needed to fit in content.

By shrinking the margins from 1.25″ to 0.75″ to fit in more information, you lower your paper usage by approximately 4.75 percent. Bleed designs are best for magazines, so it’s best to avoid them unless necessary.

4. Shift to Environmentally Friendly Fonts

Arial font is an office favorite due to its easy-to-read nature. Unfortunately, this font isn’t eco-friendly as it consumes lots of ink. We recommend switching to Times New Roman, Century Gothic, or Ecofont.

Century Gothic, for instance, offers significant ink savings as it uses 30 percent less ink than the Arial font. Another factor, besides switching the font type, you might want to consider smaller font sizes to maximize printing space.

5. Always Preview

Now we are all guilty of bypassing this step. Sometimes you fail to proofread a document before clicking the print button, only to find multiple errors, forcing you to reprint. On that note, if you wish to save time and money, it’s best to begin proofreading your work and utilizing the preview option to confirm that the document has the proper layout. Likewise, you might want to hold off on printing draft documents and only do so for the final copy.

6. Make Use of the Draft Printing Option

While we recommend using virtual documents for drafts, some situations may require you to print a draft copy. If this is the case, utilizing the draft copy and draught mode printing option on word documents would be best. This feature allows you to print out a low-quality document, saving ink.

7. Print Relevant Information

Printing the necessary information is another helpful way to reduce costs. For instance, if you are printing an online document, opt to leave out irrelevant pages. Alternatively, copy the information and paste it into a word document before printing. Doing so allows you to leave out the large images and modify font type and size. Another option would be to install free software that will enable you to select exact information.

Final Thoughts

Your company’s printing practices can result in high operational costs. Take time to evaluate your printing practices and shift to more sustainable ways like utilizing monochrome, duplex printing, and eco-friendly fonts. Reducing financial waste will allow your business to channel these resources to other activities.