• Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • 212-695-5588
  • Contact
  • Client Login
Superior Office Solutions
  • Print Services
    • Equipment And Leasing
      • Production Printers
      • Office Copiers MFPs
      • Wide Format Printers
      • Desktop Printers
      • Used & Refurbished Machines
    • Service And Support
      • Production Print Services
      • Printer Copier Repairs
    • Brands
      • Canon
      • Kyocera
      • Konica Minolta
    • Managed Services
      • Managed Print
      • Document Management
      • Secure Printing
      • Mobile Printing Solutions
  • Business Phone Services
  • Mailing Solutions
    • Postage Meters
    • Folder Inserters
    • Desktop Folders
    • Software
    • Printers
    • Additional Mailroom Equipment
  • Office Water Solutions
  • Resources
    • Testimonials
    • Blog
    • Client Login
  • About
    • Our Reviews
    • Leadership Team
    • Areas We Serve
    • Careers
  • Menu Menu

Rules-Based Print Routing: The Easy Way to Cut Office Print Costs

Do you know how much money your business wastes on printing? We guarantee you’ll be shocked if you could add it up. Rules-based print routing is a solution that helps you take back control of how your employees print. And it can save you a bundle.

The best part? It’s not expensive. In fact, if you’ve got a modern Canon copier, you might already have the software needed to do print routing.

Uncontrolled printing is EXPENSIVE

Printing costs for color prints can range from a few cents to 50 cents or more per page, depending on the printer. You’re paying for desktop printers, copier leases, service contracts (which are priced according to your print volume) and of course, paper, toner, ink and other supplies.

Chances are, your employees don’t give a thought to how much it costs every time they print a page. That leads to a lot of waste:

  • Printing emails, web content and other pages that are easily available electronically.
  • Printing large documents on expensive desktop printers.
  • Printing in color when the document is mostly black and white (such as a color signature on an email).

Rules-based print routing helps you eliminate that waste. Many businesses can dramatically reduce their printing costs.

How rules-based print routing works to save you money

How does rules-based print routing work? You use software to set up a series of customizable printer rules for your employees. For example, you can choose to:

  • Prevent or discourage employees from printing emails.
  • Control print job routing so that high-volume jobs are printed on low-cost copiers.
  • Set defaults to print black and white from certain applications, such as Excel or Outlook.

Good to know: you can customize the rules according to your specific needs. That lets you create the optimal environment for reducing printing costs without impacting your employees’ productivity. You can even customize the messages that your employees will see when they print.

8 best practices for setting up print routing rules

Here at Superior Office Systems, we’ve been helping NYC-area businesses save money on printing for decades. These are some print routing rules you can set up that cut out a lot of wasted print expense.

1. Remind users to print duplex
Reducing paper usage is an easy way to cut print costs. Whenever someone prints single-sided instead of double-sided (also called duplex printing), you can have a pop-up message remind them to conserve paper by printing duplex.

2. Route big print jobs to dedicated low-cost printers
Did you know it can cost 10 times more to print on a desktop printer than it does to print on a high-volume multifunction copier? When someone prints a large document, you can automatically route that big job to the lower-cost printer.

3. Discourage unnecessary printing
Even though documents are easily available digitally, some employees are in the habit of printing everything. You can encourage them to change this expensive behavior by setting up print routing rules that remind them not to print unless they really need to. For example, when someone prints from Outlook (or another email application), you can have a message like this pop up:

“Do you really need to print this? Accessing information electronically is better for the environment.”

4. Reduce color printing
If you’re in charge of buying it, you probably already know that color toner and ink costs much more than black. In fact, color printing can cost as much as 10 times the cost of black and white printing. Here’s what you might not realize: for every color page you print, you’re also paying more for your printer service contract.

There’s a lot of waste when it comes to color printing. People print website pages that contain a lot of color. They print documents that are mostly black and white, but might have a small amount of color (such as a color logo). That happens often when people print spreadsheets.

With rules-based print routing, you can set up printer rules that cut down on wasted color printing. You can target printing from applications (like Excel) that often have color that’s not really needed on the printed page. You can set up those documents to automatically print in black and white.

5. Reduce downtime with alerts
Print routing can also save you money by cutting down on wasted time. You can set up printer rules that re-route jobs to another device when a printer is down. You can also set up alerts to automatically alert your IT staff or alert the office manager to call for service.

TIP: If you choose a smart copier service company like SOS, you might not even need to call for service. If you experience an error that means you need a service visit, we can automatically detect that error and send a tech out to you. We might be on the way before you even know you have a problem!

6. Detect & delete duplicate print jobs
How many times do you find stacks of pages on the copier that were printed but never picked up? Or, piles of paper in the trash because someone printed a file several times?

Some print routing software can automatically detect duplicate print jobs and delete them.

7. Prevent mistakes that tie up the printer
Another common reason for wasted prints is employee error. People sometimes choose the wrong printer settings by accident. For example, they might pick a paper size that isn’t available in the printer. Or, print an entire 50-page spreadsheet instead of only one page.

You can set up print routing rules that catch these errors and prevent all that wasted paper and ink or toner.

8. Set up charge-backs
Charge-backs are a great way to reduce print expenses because people become more aware of how much they are spending on printing. Each department or group pays for their print expenses as part of their budget. When employees realize their printing is being tracked, they automatically limit their printing.

You can set up print routing rules to track print usage by individual users or groups. The software tracks every printed page, including where it was printed and whether the pages were black and white or color. You can create reports that add up print costs for internal departments or even for external clients. That’s especially useful for law firms and financial services companies.

NOTE: To use this feature, you’ll need to set up a feature called secure print along with rules-based print routing. You can do that using the same software. In fact, there are lots of useful features you can set up for your business, such as mobile printing, all using the same print management software.

Learn more: Office Managers Guide to Secure Document Printing

Software options for rules-based print routing

So, what software do you need to set up print routing rules for your office? That depends on the print devices your company uses.

If you are using modern Canon copiers in your office, you can use Canon’s uniFLOW print management software to set up rules-based print routing as well as secure printing and mobile printing.

If you’ve got a mix of copier and printer brands, check out Papercut. This brand-agnostic print management software works with all your devices to optimize your print environment and reduce your expenses.

Want to find out just how much money you can save? Read this case study: Managed Printing Saves Thousands on Office Print Costs

Is it time to upgrade your equipment to take advantage of money-saving features? Learn about the process of leasing a new office copier: The Newbie’s Guide to Leasing an Office Copier.

Newbie's Guide to Leasing an Office Copier

Categories

  • Company News
  • Document Management Services
  • Mailing & shipping
  • Managed Print Services
  • Office copy & print
  • Office Telecommunications
  • Office Water Solutions
  • Production print

Contact Us

"*" indicates required fields

About SOS

Superior Office Solutions has been adding a personal touch to the office equipment leasing industry since 1999. With four convenient locations in the tri-state area, we provide world-class equipment and unbeatable service to over 4,000 customers.

Solutions

Equipment and Leasing

Service and Support

Managed Services

Business Phone Services

Contact

Manhattan Office
212-695-5588

Westchester Office
914-332-0100

Long Island Office
516-682-8383

New Jersey Office
732-790-5300

Website by Abstrakt Marketing Group © 2021
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
Poor Print Quality from Your Copier? DIY Fixes You Should Knowpoor print qualitymanaged printingManaged Printing Saves Thousands on Office Print Costs (Case Study)
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OKLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept settingsHide notification only