Most businesses review their print costs once, when they buy or lease a device, and then largely forget about it. The machine sits in the corner, people use it, and the invoices get paid without much scrutiny. But the hardware is rarely where the real money goes.
If your organisation runs more than a handful of printers or multifunction devices, there's a strong chance you're spending significantly more than you need to. The problem is that the excess rarely shows up as one obvious line on a budget. It hides across several different areas, and without visibility over your fleet, it stays hidden.
When businesses calculate their print costs, they typically think about the lease or purchase price of the device. That's the visible number. What doesn't get captured as easily is everything that surrounds it.
Consumables are the most common culprit. Toner, drums and maintenance kits are often ordered reactively, without any monitoring of actual usage or cost-per-page. Over time, this adds up considerably, particularly on older devices that are less efficient.
Ad hoc engineer callouts are another drain that rarely makes it into anyone's print budget calculation. A managed service typically includes maintenance and support as part of a single monthly cost. An unmanaged device means every breakdown is an unplanned expense, and those costs have a way of arriving at the worst possible time.
Then there's IT staff time. Printer and copier issues are a surprisingly large source of IT support tickets in many organisations. Every hour a skilled IT person spends troubleshooting a paper jam or a network configuration issue is an hour not spent on higher-value work. It's a real cost, even if it doesn't appear on a supplier invoice.
One of the most straightforward areas of overspend, and one of the easiest to fix, is colour printing. Most devices default to colour unless a user actively selects mono. In practice, that means a significant proportion of documents that could perfectly well be printed in black and white are being printed in colour at three to four times the cost per page.
Applying sensible print policies, defaulting to mono and duplex, restricting colour to those who genuinely need it, can reduce print costs noticeably without requiring any new hardware at all. It's a change that takes an afternoon to implement and tends to deliver ongoing savings from day one.
Beyond individual device settings, many organisations are simply running the wrong devices for their actual usage patterns.
A high-spec A3 colour MFD sitting in a department that mostly prints single-sided A4 documents is an expensive mismatch. Equally, a low-volume device being pushed well beyond its recommended monthly output will wear out faster, cost more to run, and generate more callouts.
Right-sizing means matching the device specification, its speed, format capability, monthly duty cycle and cost-per-page, to what a team or location actually needs. Done properly, it's often the single biggest lever available for reducing print costs, and it doesn't require cutting corners or reducing service quality.
Underpinning all of this is a straightforward problem: most businesses have no clear picture of what their fleet is doing.
Without usage data, you can't identify which devices are underused, which are overworked, where colour printing is concentrated, or how your cost-per-page compares across different devices and locations. You're essentially managing a significant operational cost in the dark.
A print audit changes that. It maps your existing fleet, captures usage data, identifies inefficiencies, and gives you a clear basis for making better decisions. It doesn't have to lead to a wholesale change, but it does give you the information you need to take control.
Principal works with Canon, Kyocera, Konica Minolta and Fujifilm, which means recommendations are based on what's right for a client's specific situation, not on a preference for one brand over another.
A fully managed solution typically brings together the right hardware, a service agreement covering maintenance and consumables, proactive monitoring through Principal's ProACTive support, and flexible finance that makes the monthly cost predictable and manageable.
For most organisations, the shift from unmanaged to managed doesn't just reduce costs. It removes the administrative overhead of dealing with multiple suppliers, reduces IT support burden, and means that print simply works, reliably, without anyone having to chase it.
If you're not sure what your print fleet is actually costing you, that's usually a sign worth acting on.
Principal offers a free, no-obligation print audit for businesses that want a clear picture of where their money is going and what a better-managed solution would look like. There's no pressure and no commitment, just an honest assessment from a team that has been doing this for over 30 years.
