The Kopier Net Blog

The Must Know on Copiers, Technology, and Business

Printables to Help You Meet Your New Year’s Resolution!

Posted on January 6, 2016 by kopiernet

As the New Year is finally here, it is a time to reflect on the past and look forward to what is to come in the future. This is where the infamous New Year’s Resolutions come into play; some are personal, some are family-oriented, and others are professional. To help reach these goals, we have found some useful (and free!) printables geared towards some of the most common resolutions made every year. Even if these don’t match what you plan to get accomplished this year, they are worth using as helpful tools at home or the office.

Keep a Clean Home: Cleaning Checklist

Cleaning the house is a rather grueling task that can take up your entire day. Rather than working hard for many hours, why not do a little each day so the burden is less. This checklist helps keep you on track with small, daily tasks and chores that leaves you with the whole house being cleaned by the end of the week. The best part of this list… it’s customizable! This checklist will have your house looking spotless in a manageable way.

Lose Weight: Food & Fitness Journal

Many people commonly make it a priority to lose weight and get in shape at the beginning of the year; to assist with that we have provided a whole packet of useful printables to help you work towards a healthy 2016. There is a food journal to document everything you eat each day so you can evaluate and track your eating habits, a workout planner to keep you on track with cardio and strength training sessions, a water tracker to make sure that you stay hydrated, as well as healthy meal planner.

Save Money: Monthly Budget Planner

One of the more popular resolutions each year is to get out of debit or to manage money better; this Budget Planner Sheet will help a lot with that! This printable is a great visual way to see your debits, plan out your expenses, and work towards maximum savings. Managing your finances can be stressful and difficult to understand, this is great way to better focus on your goals.

Learn Something New: Goals List

If you don’t know where to start with your annual goals, this list is for you. This printable promotes you to reflect on goals reached in the previous year as well as encourages you to meet multiple types of goals for the year to come. This fantastic form is suitable for office employees, team members, families, or personal use. We suggest keeping them so you can look back at previous set ambitions and reflect.

Get Organized: Meal Planner

Planning meals ahead of time is a great way to stay organized throughout week. This Meal Planner with Grocery List is a useful printable for family dinners, weekday lunches, or for the holiday season. By planning your meals at the beginning of the week you can save money, time, and encourage yourself to eat healthy… all popular resolutions! The design of this sheet is great because it allows you to easily tear off the grocery list so you can take it shopping with you!

Travel More: Family Travel Checklist

Whether you are packing for yourself or a whole family, we all get that feeling that we ‘forgot something’ when packing for a trip. Well fear not with this helpful checklist! It easily breaks down every item that needs to be packed by each person in your family. The items on the list range from clothing, toiletries, beachwear, even carry-on items. Be at ease on your next trip when you pack with this trusty list!

How to Establish Printing Policies In Your Office

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Companies have guidelines and procedures for every aspect of business interaction these days, and it is now important to have rules for office equipment usage so personnel do not abuse their rights. Luckily, Kyocera has customized business applications to enforce the printing policies that you would like to implement in your office. Not only do these rules help protect the company, but they also set clear guidelines and expectations for the staff. Points of concern that may need to be addressed are: employees being permitted to print personal copies, blocking certain people from seeing private documents that have been scanned, and/or disabling people from printing on copiers outside of their department.

The main reason that you need to establish policies and procedures at your business is to setup security for your confidential papers as well as save money on excess printing to prevent unneeded expenses. Establishing copier and document management rules will help your business control copier and printer usage, track and log usage, potentially cache images of all printed material, and prevent misuse of company equipment and potential privacy issues.

Below are some concerns that you should create office protocol for in your workplace and corresponding Kyocera business applications that can support putting those procedures into effect:

Issue: How usage will be tracked?

Solution: Pcounter – Easily manage the workflow of documents that are being printed, copied, scanned or faxed

Issue: What copier features are certain users/user groups are allowed to use?

Solution: AccessLock – Give specific MFP user groups or departments access to only the device functions they require for print, scan, copy and fax functionality.

Issue: How do we obtain stored information if our network crashes?

Solution: PreservDOX – Critical documents can be saved to a designated synced folder at your PC for safe keeping and immediate access. To protect confidentiality of the routed files, PIN codes are assigned to each folder – eliminating unauthorized access to the data.

Issue: What employees get to print in color?

Solution: ColorLock – Restrict color functionality to only those who really need it by requiring staff members to login with a password before they can access color print ability. The password can be on a person by person basis, group, or department.

Issue: How do we restrict confidential documents from being seen on the printer?

Solution: CentraQ – Helps to minimize the risk of unauthorized access to confidential paperwork left at the machine by allowing end-users to quickly access secured jobs via their HID cards. It also provide document control by allowing administrators to track user and device specific print, copy, scan and fax usage across all devices.

Other preventative questions you should be asking are:

Are personal copies permitted?
Who should be contacted if supplies are needed for a copier?
Which printers and copiers should be utilized for different print jobs?
Who is the point of contact should there be a service issue?

Interested? You can learn more about the Kyocera Document Solutions listed above here.

Why It is Important to Clean Your Toner Supply Closet

Posted on July 10, 2015 by kopiernet

When was the last time that you cleaned your toner supply closet? We just completed this task at our office and it was quite an enlightening experience. We found so many things; from outdated technology, to excessive amounts of supplies that we thought we were “out of”, and tons of loose paper. There are a lot of benefits to straightening up your supply closet and we have provided a few tips that will even save your company money! We have detailed where to start the organizational process, what you will find, and how the purge will benefit you and your office!

WHERE to start

Begin the clearing out process by taking every single item out of the closet. Sort everything from the closet into one of three piles: toss, keep, or place somewhere else. Objects to be tossed should be:old user manuals for machines that you no longer have, dated/no longer used devices (i.e. CD-ROM’s), and anything broken. Some materials do not need to be thrown out but might need to be placed somewhere else in the office. For example, cleaning products should be moved to the kitchen, certain booklets/binders might need to go the specific person in the office that would reference them (IT), and other stuff can be moved to storage. At the end, you should be left with only the tools that are usable and needed in the supply closet. Classify everything by type, label, and place back neatly into the closet.

WHAT you will find

While sorting, pay close attention to decide what you want to keep or toss. Make sure all the toner cartridges in the closet are for the current copiers in your office, and not for an old copier that you no longer have. Should you have excess or expired toner, call Kopier Net and we will have a technician pick these supplies up to clear them out of your office. Along the same note, take an inventory of your toner supply. Make sure that you have a spare set of toner for each printer in your office. If you notice that you are in need of something, simply call us or place an order online on our website.

HOW it will benefit you

Aside from the fact that you will have a tidy space, you will gain from cleaning out your closet in other ways as too. First off, you may save money. Hopefully you will find extra copier supplies (toner, paper, waste toner bottles) that you weren’t aware that you had; so now you won’t have to purchase those resources for a while. Perhaps you can even sell items that your office no longer needs but others might (label maker, printer, phone system, etc.) You will be able to evaluate any excess, old, or obsolete toner and copier supplies so you know how to order ahead in the future. Lastly, organizing the closet with minimal clutter and use of labeling will minimize downtown for employees when searching for what they need.

Top Ten Copier Etiquette Rules

Posted on June 10, 2015 by kopiernet

There is always that one person in the office…the one that tells everyone when the toner is out, but refuses to replace the empty toner bottle. It’s frustrating. With so many different people in the office using the copier, it is important to have a set protocol for how to operate the machine. Setting rules for the variety of copier users is a great way to let everyone know that they are responsible for making sure the copier is running to its best ability at all times. We have provided our Top Ten Copier Etiquette Rules that we suggest you establish in your office.

Don’t leave the paper trays empty. Refill them as needed.
Always check the touch screen for a flashing icon, which could mean a misfeed has occurred, toner is low or there is an error code that needs resolving.
Never walk away from a copier that is jammed. Try to resolve the issue.
If you cannot resolve a copier issue on your own, notify your office manager so a technician can be called.
Let people with fewer documents than you print first.
If you see someone using the copier, do not print to that machine. Wait until your co-worker is done running their copy job.
Don’t remove someone else’s documents from the copier. Find the owner of the documents or give the documents to the office manager to hold.
If you print anything on thick paper, colored paper or legal sized paper remove it from the tray once you are done printing so someone else does not accidentally print on it.
Remove staples, sticky notes and paper clips from all documents that you’re going to put through the Top Feeder.
Keep the area around the copier clean. Do not eat or drink around the copier. Pick up any mess you might make around the area.

What copier rules have you established in your office??? Share below.

Toner Pirates

Posted on April 20, 2015 by kopiernet

How to Avoid Being Scammed

Toner pirates are scam artists that will call offices and trick people into purchasing toner. A toner pirate will pretend to be your local copier/toner provider in order to find out more about your machine so they can send you toner. Upon learning about your machine, they will offer you ridiculously discounted toner prices so that you choose to purchase from them. However, they will end up sending you a bill for up to 10 times the normal cost of toner that you would usually pay. Sometimes, if they know enough information about your copier and business location, they will send you a bill for overly priced toner without your authorization.

The toner pirates will claim to be your “normal toner provider”, or warehouse of the toner supplier but will not mention the name of a company that sounds familiar to you. You may receive multiple phone calls from the toner pirates, each time trying to gather more information about the make and model of your copier. They try to speak with someone who knows as little about the copier as possible as to easily fool them and gather the information that they need. They will tell you that they are offering “closeout” or “special” pricing on the toner. They will not give you contact information so they can be reached again, if you ask for it; many times they will just hang up. To prevent being scammed, these are some easy tips to follow. Never give your copier make, model, or toner information over the phone to someone you are unfamiliar with. Train your receptionist and staff on how to deal with these phone calls and how to not give away information or commit to purchases. If you do get scammed and toner gets sent to your office, your only defense is to refuse shipment of the toner.

If you fear that you have spoken to a toner pirate, do not commit to anything. If you are not sure if it is someone from Kopier Net, simply call our office to confirm. Just know that we at Kopier Net would never call you to try to get a toner order. Report suspected toner pirates to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by calling 1.877.FTCHELP (1-877-382-4357).

Toner Recycling Programs

Posted on April 17, 2015 by kopiernet

We love to hear customer feedback at Kopier Net and we are constantly looking for ways to better serve our customers. Recently, we have been getting a lot of questions inquiring about how to recycle empty toner cartridges. Customers are searching for ways to recycle their toner properly rather than just tossing them in the trash. We empathize with this concern as we always try to Go Green at our office and strive to keep our environment clean. Though Kopier Net does not offer our own in-house toner recycling program, we have found other businesses in the industry that do. We have provided some wonderful options for your empty toner and waste toner bottles that we hope your company can setup and start implementing in your office as well.

Konica Minolta: If your copier takes Konica Minolta brand toner then we encourage you to use their new Clean Planet Program. This cost free recycling program doesn’t require you to pay for recycling costs or shipping. All Konica Minolta consumables from every Konica Minolta model can be recycled. Follow the link to sign up for their “Box Program” which allows you to choose the size box you want to send your toners back in based on usage. No matter the volume there is a program to fit your needs.

Kyocera: As an authorized dealer of Copystar, we recommend customers using Kyocera/Copystar toner to participate in the TCR Program. The Kyocera TCR (Toner Container Recycling) Program provides a convenient disposal solution for environmentally conscious customers. The program allows you to ship your toner and waste toner bottles to the Kyocera Recycling Center in Texas. The only downside to this program is that you must pay to ship the toner yourself; but if there are no local toner recycling centers in your area this a viable, eco-conscious solution.

Office Depot: No matter what brand toner you are using in your copier, Office Depot/Office Max will recycle it for you. You have the option of dropping the empty toner bottles at a store or ordering a recycling box online. Simply order a FREE collection box by adding the item to your cart online — it will be shipped to you free of charge. Once the box is full, seal it up and return via UPS. The prepaid label is already attached to the box. The return shipping is also free…You can’t beat that!

We highly encourage all of our customers to take part in a greener way of life, and recycling your empty toner cartridges is an easy step in that direction. Review the various solutions and decide which one best suits your office. Be sure to read all the rules and fine print for each recycling program. For instance, Konica Minolta and Kyocera only take back their own brand name toners and supplies, and will charge you for shipping if you send a different brand toner to their facility. For more information on recycling programs that are available to your office, email us at kopiernet@gmail.com.

Taking Care of Your Copier

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The copier is one of the most important machines in your office; it is used throughout the whole day and it is expected to run in top condition at all times. Like any machine (car, phone, or appliance) your copier needs some TLC and a good clean every once in a while. Keeping your copier clean will not only give you cleaner copies, it will also increase the lifespan of your machine by several years. Read on to learn some cleaning tips to keep your copier running well for years to come.

Step 1. Power Off. Before you start cleaning your machine, make sure to turn the copier off. This will prevent any electrical accidents and will keep you and your machine safe.

Step 2. Collect. Cleaning your copier requires specific types of products. Collect the following items: a microfiber cloth, cotton swabs, Windex, rubbing alcohol, and a can of air.

Step 3. Wipe. A clear and dust-free optic glass will produce better quality copies. To clean the glass of your copier use a microfiber cloth and some Windex. Never use paper towels as they can leave dust residue and particles on the glass. Only use a small amount of glass cleaner, because too much cleaner will leave streaks. Do not use water to clean the glass, as this will also leave streaks.

Step 4. Sanitize. With so many people touching the Control Panel everyday this is a huge spot for germs. Pour some rubbing alcohol onto a cloth and wipe down the Control Panel/Touch Screen area. Though it might be easier to use a wet towel or Clorox wipe, these options are not as sanitary or safe for the copier. Use the cloth and alcohol on the tray handles of the machine as well, and any other places that are often touched.

Step 5. Dust. Small particles in the machine can sometimes lead to poor copy quality and jamming. There are two ways to get the dust off of your machine. You can wipe the machine down with a microfiber cloth, but do not use any product to assist. For the back of the machine, paper tray corners, and in between the rollers, use a can of air. Once the particles surface, you can wipe them away with the cloth.

Step 6. Clean. An effective way to prevent jamming is to clean the copier rollers of dust, paper debris, and dirt. Start by getting out the dust in-between the rollers; use the can of air and a microfiber cloth. Make sure to get a full revolution of the rollers so that you collect as many dust particles as possible. Then, clean the rollers using rubbing alcohol on a cloth or using a cotton swab. Let the rollers dry before turning on the machine.

Step 7. Refresh. The paper trays on the copier are another place that need to be routinely cleaned. With that area storing paper, lots of particles and dirt can accumulate there. Remove the paper from the trays, blow out the dust with the can of air, and then fan out and replenish the paper. If the machine has not been used recently, refresh the paper with a new stack that is dust free.

We suggest cleaning your machine monthly to quarterly.

**If there is a major issue, please place a service request so that our technicians can clean your machine properly.**

Email Etiquette

Posted on March 9, 2015 by kopiernet

Corresponding via email is the most popular form of communication in business now. In fact, research has shown that we spend nearly 25% of our work time writing and responding to emails.

Yet, even with this being such a vital part of day-to-day business, many professionals are not capable of writing an appropriate email. This goes beyond simple spelling errors or smartphone typing mistakes. Some of the errors you may be making can be profiling you (and your company) in a very unprofessional manner.

Use these Email Etiquette tips below to learn how to construct a better, more engaging email.

1. Your Email Address Matters

If your company provides you with an office email address, you need to communicate using that. However, if you are using your own, personal email address make sure it is fitting and appropriate. The email address should convey who you are to the unknown sender. Some good examples are: FirstName@______.com or FirstInitialLastName@______.com. Some bad examples are: QTsweetie@______.com or BeerLover@______.com; these are not professional and can turn off a future(or current) employer, customer, or co-worker.

2. Make Your Subject Line Short & Sweet

The subject line is a way to summarize what your email is about in a clear and concise way. It should be 3 to 5 words in length, direct, and to the point. Many recipients decide whether to read an email and/or the urgency of reading an email based on the subject. These are some examples of acceptable subject lines: “Meeting Time Change” or “Customer Account Status”.

3. Use Appropriate Salutations

Business emails should always read professional. Never use laid-back or slang terms in an email, even if you feel like you are friendly with whom you are corresponding with. Terms like “Hey” or “Yo” should not be used to begin an email. Never abbreviate words like in text speak, such as “Thnx”, “U”, and “Ltr”. It’s also good to note that you should never shorten anyone’s name that you have never met; don’t automatically assume that Steven wants to be addressed as Steve.

4. Be Aware of the “Reply All”

Always be cautious of Replying-All on an email. Before you click the Send button think: 1- Does everyone included on this email WANT to know what I have to say? 2- Does everyone NEED to know what I have to say? 3- Would anyone be UPSET or offended by what I have to say? Sometimes it is best to respond to the original sender only. When responding to a group email, always double check to make sure everyone included on the email is intended to read your response.

5. Summarize

No one likes opening an email to see tons of paragraphs written before them; it is overwhelming and often readers will choose to ignore it before reading it all because it seems too taunting. There are situations were you may have a lot to say; in these cases you can use bullet points to get all your topics across, or break your thoughts into several shorter emails. Always re-read your email to edit anything that might seem like you are rambling. Your email should be detailed so there is no confusion but comprehensive of all your thoughts.

6. Proofread EVERY Email

There is nothing more embarrassing then sending an email with spelling errors; it can make you look unprofessional and lazy. Proofreading goes beyond looking for spelling errors; also make sure your tense is accurate, you use the correct meaning of a word (its vs it’s or affect vs effect), and your punctuation is precise. It helps to read the email draft aloud to yourself to make sure that there are no errors. If it is an email of extreme importance or perhaps for a job application, let a friend or co-worker proofread it as well.

7. Set Up A Signature

Your email should always end with a proper signature. The signature should include a kind closing such as “Thank You”, “Kind Regards”, or “Sincerely” followed by your full name. Underneath, you should include all of your contact information: Phone Number, Email Address, Company Name, etc. This way it is easy for the person you are emailing to get back in contact with you. Make sure to add this signature setup to your phone too; a sent email from your phone should not just end with “Sent from my iPhone”.

8. Never Assume Privacy

Remember that your email is never truly private; so use discretion. The person on the other side of your email has the ability to print or forward that email to whomever they want; may it be another co-worker, HR, or even your boss. Never write something in an email that has the potential to lead to a reprimanding by a superior. Also be aware that IT and top level personnel at your company probably have access to your inbox. If you wouldn’t want someone in your company to read what you’re writing, please press delete.