Top 10 Ways To Save on Office Supplies

Suprisingly the number one expense in office supplies is.....?  We will tell you at the of this post.

Here are some tips you can use to cut costs in purchasing and maintaining office supplies:

Duplex or Double sided printing - where possible print on both sides of the paper. This has the potential to reduce spending on printing paper by a maximum of 50%.

Set printer preference to "low" quality - This helps to reduce the cost in ink or toner for projects that do not require high quality print outs.

Buying in Bulk - Most office supply stores will offer competitive discounted on buying in large quantities.

Online Documents - Customize your documents to be signed online where possible. This minimizes the use of paper.

Online Collaboration - Use Google Docs or Windows Live for sharing and editing files instead of printing documents.

Centralize your inventory - Take inventory of all the office supplies you have available right now and transfer them to central locations where they can be easily found. So by ensuring that there are adequate supplies in your central inventory and keep that restocked, there is less reason for members of your staff to hoard.

Learn when to buy - Office Supply Stores have peak seasons and off seasons. Usually, office supply stores will offer discounts, rebates or sales on supplies during the summer months, so try to stock up on what you need before you have to pay full price. On the other hand, paper suppliers tend to try to raise prices during the early months of the year, and if you use a lot of paper, you may avoid price increases by purchasing a year’s supply in December.

Compare Toners to Toners - Some suppliers will offer inferior goods at a slight discount. Most likely, you will not be satisfied with these goods and they will not reflect well on your business. By shopping multiple sources, you will often be able to find quality goods at the same or lower price than the inferior ones.

Recycle - You can save yourself a lot of money by recycling. Instead of tossing the used ink cartridges, take them to an ink-refilling company.  You can even sell your spent cartridges.

Recycle - You can save additional money by recycling paper. Instead of tossing the junk faxes, re-use the paper for meeting notes.

Compare Office Supplies Prices - We built a free to to compare Office Depot to Office Max prices at one - all for free - 

The number one expense in the business for office supplies is - Paper, then Toner or Ink

So check it out, was is the number one expense in your office for supplies?