Do You Know How Much Your Company Spends on Printer Toner?

If you’re looking for ways to better manage business expenses, one area to examine is the costs revolving around your printers. One major factor that many business people overlook is the annual expense of their toner–and how that expense is greatly impacted by the amount of toner coverage their printing requires.

In fact, whether you realize it or not, the amount of toner your business consumes in a year can seriously make a dent on your bottom line. The good news is that you can come to better understand the ways toner coverage depletes your cartridges, and then you can make adjustments that could potentially save you up to 30% per month in toner costs.

Let’s “cover” this issue it in a little more detail:

Are you part of the 5%?

Think of toner like gasoline. The more ground you cover, the more gasoline your car consumes. The same can be said for your toner cartridge. The more coverage it is required to meet, the shorter its lifespan.

What’s the typical toner coverage per page? That is a little murky. Most toner manufacturers claim the average estimated toner coverage for most business documents is about 5% per page. (That helps them claim a longer-lasting cartridge, but that number is a little unrealistic when you think about it.) After all, having 5% toner coverage on a page is like having a mere two non-bolded paragraphs on an entire 8.5 x 11 white sheet of paper.

Do the business documents that your company prints look like that? Probably not.

What’s on your business documents?

It’s important to get an accurate estimation of toner coverage so that your toner cost doesn’t start eating into your profits. If your company produces a lot of documents with text and graphics then you could be using upwards of 5-10% more toner coverage on your business documents.

Researchers claim that general business documents are at a 8 percent toner coverage range, while law firms or accounting firms can have toner coverage rate as high as 12 percent.

How to decrease your coverage 

To decrease your toner coverage and boost your bottom line, there are three areas to consider:

1. Be in the know. When you have accurate facts about how many printers are on your network and how much printing and toner coverage is being required, you will be in much better position to keep your toner usage in check. Having the accurate toner coverage needed for each type of document you print, you can keep better track.
2. Special color considerations. If you print a lot of color documents or presentations, be considerate of the backgrounds. Obviously, color requires more toner coverage, so not having a dark blue background on your PowerPoint slides might be a smarter way to go.
3. Implement rules-based printing. If your company doesn’t have rules in place for printing, then you may have employees using up more of your toner than you might know. Also, make rules about when to discharge a toner cartridge. To save the most money, it’s good to run the cartridge until it’s dry.

Are you ready to save up to 30% on toner?

In short, if you start paying attention to the toner coverage your printing jobs require, then you will be well on your way to saving nearly a third on your toner expenses. If you don’t have one already, utilizing an expert and well-run Managed Print program is another way to keep costs under control.

Good luck and prosperous printing.