Most businesses don't think twice about their printing costs — until they realize how much they're actually spending. Studies consistently show that the average company spends 1 to 3% of annual revenue on printing, and much of that spend is avoidable. The problem is that print costs are spread across so many line items — paper, toner, maintenance, energy, IT labor — that the true total rarely shows up in any single budget report.
If you've never taken a hard look at what your organization is spending on its print environment, there's a good chance you're leaving money on the table. Here are the most common signs your business is overspending on printing — and what you can do about it.
You Don't Know Your True Cost Per Page
This is the biggest red flag. If no one in your organization can tell you what it costs to print a single page — in both black and white and color — you're almost certainly overspending. The cost per page isn't just toner. It includes:
- Toner and ink cartridges
- Paper and specialty media
- Maintenance, parts and service calls
- Energy consumption
- IT staff time spent troubleshooting printer issues
- Device depreciation or lease payments
Without visibility into your true cost per page, there's no baseline for improvement — and no way to know whether your office printing costs are reasonable or inflated.
You Have Too Many Devices (or the Wrong Ones)
One of the most common sources of waste is an oversized or poorly planned print fleet. Over the years, departments tend to accumulate their own printers and copiers without any centralized strategy. The result is a mix of underused desktop printers, aging machines with expensive consumables, and redundant devices sitting in corners.
Signs your fleet is out of balance:
- Multiple desktop printers scattered across the office, each serving just one or two people
- Devices that are rarely used but still consume energy and require maintenance
- No standardization — a mix of brands and models that each require different toner and parts
- High-volume jobs being sent to devices not built for that workload
A smarter approach is to right-size your fleet by routing print jobs to efficient, centralized multifunction printers and reserving desktop printers only for areas with genuinely low print volume.
Employees Are Printing Without Any Rules or Oversight
When anyone can print anything, in any quantity, in full color, with no accountability — costs spiral fast. Unchecked printing is one of the easiest problems to fix, yet most businesses never address it because they don't realize how much waste it creates.
Common culprits include:
- Defaulting to color printing when black and white would suffice
- Single-sided printing on every job
- Printing emails, web pages, and documents that are never picked up from the tray
- No tracking of who prints what or how much
Simple print policies — like defaulting to duplex and black and white — can cut paper and toner usage dramatically. With device management software, you can enforce these rules automatically without relying on employees to remember.
You're Buying Toner Reactively
If your office runs out of toner and someone has to scramble to order more — or worse, run to a retail store — you're paying more than you need to. Reactive toner purchasing typically means:
- Paying retail or rush-delivery prices
- No volume discounts or supplier agreements
- Downtime while waiting for supplies to arrive
- Stockpiling cartridges "just in case," tying up cash in inventory
With a managed print services program, toner is shipped automatically based on actual usage data — before you run out. No emergency orders, no wasted inventory, and significantly lower supply costs.
Your IT Team Spends Too Much Time on Printer Problems
Printer issues are one of the top help desk complaints in any office, and every hour your IT staff spends troubleshooting a jam, replacing a drum, or reinstalling a driver is an hour they're not spending on strategic work. For most businesses, print infrastructure support is a hidden labor cost that never gets tracked.
Common time sinks include:
- Troubleshooting connectivity and driver issues
- Managing firmware updates across multiple brands and models
- Coordinating service calls and warranty claims
- Setting up new devices and decommissioning old ones
Offloading this to a Managed Print Services provider means your IT team gets that time back, and printer issues get resolved faster by technicians who specialize in exactly that.
You Haven't Assessed Your Print Environment in Over a Year
Business needs change. Headcount shifts, offices get reorganized, remote and hybrid work changes who's in the building on any given day. If your print environment hasn't been evaluated recently, there's a good chance your current setup no longer matches how your team actually works.
An assessment looks at:
- How many devices you have and where they're located
- Actual print volume per device
- Current cost per page across your fleet
- Opportunities to consolidate, upgrade, or eliminate devices
- Security risks in your current print workflow
The goal isn't to sell you more hardware — it's to give you a clear, data-driven picture of what you're spending and where the savings are.
What You Can Do About It
The good news is that most printing overspend is fixable — and the fixes pay for themselves quickly. A combination of fleet right-sizing, print policies, automated supply management, and ongoing monitoring can typically reduce print costs by 20 to 30 percent.
The first step is simply getting visibility into your current state. Once you know what you're spending and where, the path forward becomes obvious.
Not sure where to start? UBEO's Business Technology Assessment gives you a clear, data-driven picture of your print environment — including what you're spending, where the waste is, and how to fix it. It's free, and there's no obligation. Get in touch with UBEO today to schedule yours.