Someone is laughing their way to the bank when it comes to printer ink prices, but it isn't small businesses. A gallon of printer ink can cost a minimum of $2,000. Granted, Connecticut small businesses usually don't purchase a gallon of ink at a time. Suddenly, walking to the office printer and finding two copies of a 50-page .PDF file that had been printed accidentally and left for recycling would take on new significance.

In fact, in a conservative assessment, the average employee of a small to medium business uses $1000 in printer resources per year. Of course, there is a solution.

To save money in the area of printing, businesses today are implementing printing management practices. These are internal rules Network Synergy can set up to ensure printing is efficient.

Intelligent Printer Selection - Prioritizes printing type by choosing the appropriate printer, print quality and other options based on preset preferences. This can even be set up to work from laptops and smartphones for remote location printing.

Set Quota via User ID or Department ID - Each ID can be equipped with department information, personal information, and a set limit on print quantities and frequencies. This feature will often lower the amount of prints because there is the chance that a quota will be reached when something absolutely imperative needs to be printed.

Client Related Printing Tools - If you're printing materials related to a specific client or account, the printer can be programmed in a way that ensures that they're automatically billed for the material and printing costs. There is even occasion where you can show a client their balance, print logs and notify them when something is being printed or faxed. As a general practice, you don't want to nickel-and-dime your customers. There may be occation when they request print outs of documents that are normally digital correspondence. This gives an the option to charge them, while swaying most customers to stay green.

Print Logging/Reports - A log of printing including time of print, page amount, identity of printer (name or ID Code). Screen shots, clip boards and other documents that may not be saved are remembered if required. There are even some options that give you information about toner levels, paper, etc.

Securing Your Printer - Printers need to be secured just like computers. Updates, security threats and Wi-Fi are important to the confidentiality of you and your clients. There is even malware out there that can infect certain printers and cause them to malfunction.

A Few Other Tips to Save on Ink:

Be Conscious - If you and your employees get into good printing habits, it will not only save money but save time. If you have to print out an e-mail correspondence, avoid printing signatures (especially your own) and timestamps related to your correspondence.

Double Up - Documents like PDFs, PowerPoint, and Word Documents , can be resized so that more than one page/side is on the page.

Lower Print Quality - By lowering the quality of prints that are in house or reference only, you'll save ink. Draft quality is a low-quality, high-speed output in printed form from a printer.

For more information about practices that will lower printing costs, or other cost-saving best practices for your small business, contact Network Synergy at (203) 261-2201.