11 Easy Print Rules You Can Use to Cut Document Costs and Waste
Did you know studies estimate half of all print jobs are thrown away?
Not just thrown away, but thrown away unused.
As a business owner or office manager, that is literally the equivalent of taking a few dollars out of your pocket every day and throwing them in the trash. The more documents you print, the larger the wads of cash you're tossing away.
There is a relatively easy and simple way to trim this waste – good for both your bottom line and the environment.
Print rules.
Not like “Print rulez, digital droolz,” but rules you can implement to manage your print jobs.
These rules are enabled by software such as the Xerox Secure Print Manager Suite.
The ability to track who prints documents, how many documents and to which devices allows a business to continually fine-tune rules and permissions – because not everyone needs to print in color.
These Are the Rules
These aren't all of the possible rules, but here are 11 to get you started. Don't see one you need on this list, most rules-based software gives you the ability to create your own and tweak existing rules.
- Require manager approval for large print jobs. Identify a page count threshold. Anything larger than that requires approval.
- Default to black and white printing. Color – even a single word – means that page is more expensive to print. You can automatically convert jobs to greyscale too
- Delete duplicate print jobs. People get frustrated and click “print” multiple times. Automatically deleting these redundant jobs cuts waste quickly.
- Restrict access for users. Don't let anyone outside of marketing have permission to print in color, for example. You can also restrict printing capabilities based on the day of the week or time of day.
- Default to double-sided printing.
- Route color and high-volume print jobs to the most efficient (lower cost per page) device. Create alerts so users know where their document is going – so they don't attempt to keep printing it!
- Restrict certain types of files. There could be personal printing happening in your office. Restrict printing of files such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF or other image files if you suspect family photo printing. Require administrative approval to release those kinds of files.
- Print job doesn't meet your print rules requirements? Delete it automatically so it's not gumming up your print stream.
- Re-route jobs when a copier/printer is down or backed up. Create an automatic alert for the sender so they know where their print job can be retrieved. This prevents the common scenario of printing, the user walking to the machine and seeing it's backed up or down and then going back to their desk to print it elsewhere.
- Don't print faxes, route them to email inboxes.
- Restrict email printing or create an automated message that says something like “Do you really want to print an email?” By making users stop and think, they might realize they can just as easily digitally file a document instead of printing a copy of it.
Which rules could you use today?
