How to Cut Down on Paper Costs at the Office

Going completely “paper-less” in the workplace is quite challenging; however reducing your business printing is not only cost-effective, but also valuable to the environment. Paper is something that many companies’ use large quantities of and is often not questioned. The average American office worker is estimated to use a sheet of paper every 12 minutes, which leads to a ream per person every two and a half working weeks, and ending in a dispose of 100-200 pounds of paper each year*. While recycling is a helpful idea, the most profitable waste management strategy is reduction.  We have provided several solutions that we suggest using at your company to cut down on paper usage.

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• Print Paper Double Sided – Changing your copier setting to default to Double Sided will help reduce the amount of pages printed by 50%. This is beneficial when you have large reports, lengthy contracts, manuals or packets. The Double Sided option can be setup on each computer individually (based on who needs it) or company-wide by adjusting the copier default setting.
• Reuse Paper – Perhaps you can’t totally prevent printing; but you can promote the reuse of paper. If you only used the front side of the paper, use the back side for notes or scratch work. Or rather than putting used paper in the trash, turn it over and place it into the copier to print on the other side.
• Think Before You Print –Printing out all emails and documents is easy… but wasteful. Be mindful of everything you print and try to only print what is absolutely necessary. Emails with only 1 or 2 lines of text is not necessary.
• Try Technology First –Printing and filling important documents causes a huge waste; scanners and virtual storage can not only reduce printing usage, but also allow you to get rid of the bulky filing cabinets used for storage. Another suggestion is instead of printing out employee and office paperwork, such as payroll, newsletters, memos, and forms; simply send it in an email. Also, choose to email recipients information rather than faxing.
• Updated Billing System – Consider switching to a paperless program to bill your customers their invoices; this will save cost on paper, envelopes, and stamps. Likewise, submit all payment to your vendors online if possible; many companies offer credit card payments via phone, email or website.
• Recycling – At the end of the day, some printing is inevitable. To help offset that, you should recycle all your paper rather than throwing it away. Some documents are confidential and need to be shredded; luckily shredded paper can be recycled too.

 

*Sourced: Hawken,Lovins & Lovins. Natural Capitalism

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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How to Establish Printing Policies In Your Office

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.

Utilizing YouTube

There are many great resources that are available to help an office with their copier needs; manuals, drivers, supplier websites, and more. YouTube is another great tool that provides a variety of copier solutions. Even though it might not be first to mind in terms of support, there are a variety of informational videos to assist you with copier issues as well as videos to educate you on new copier features. We selected some of our favorite YouTube channels that we encourage you to browse that offer a total document solution to all your copier needs.

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 Kyocera/Copystar

The Kyocera Document Solutions America channel is a convenient source for service, support, and knowledge on all Kyocera has to offer. There are videos to find clear step-by-step instructions specific to your Kyocera model on how to change your toner & waste toner containers. There are also some great videos in their ‘How To’ Section that teach you to: copy, send, print, overlay, make a booklet, and much more.  If you are interested in learning about business applications for your copier and how they work, Kyocera offers a large selection of informative videos in the following categories: Capture and Distribution; Document Management; Mobile and Cloud; Network Device Management; Output Management; Cost Control and Security. -VISIT HERE-

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  Konica Minolta

The Konica Minolta channel provides videos highlighting why you can count on their machines for your business needs. Watch case studies that show how Konica Minolta has been able to help businesses find solutions for working smarter. These case studies and testimonials detail how the Konica Minolta copiers and applications helped specific businesses resolve document imaging issues; perhaps these can inspire solutions for your office as well. If you would prefer to learn more about new document management solutions (like machines, applications, & features), Konica Minolta also has a variety of videos that highlight their upcoming projects; which is a great way to stay ahead of the technological curve. -VISIT HERE-

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 Brother

Brother Office Channel is a wonderful resource to watch videos for both work and play with your machine. There are over 150 support videos that can assist in showing you how to do everything from clearing error messages, to setting up your machine to the network, to printing envelopes.  To keep your Brother machine functioning well, there are several handy videos on how to properly clean your machine. If you would like to use your Brother printer for a more creative purpose, there are also great videos for some fun DIY projects. -VISIT HERE-

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 We invite you to surf these videos and others to learn more about how to utilize your copier. It’s helpful to note that there are many other fantastic videos on YouTube that are copier model specific; just type the make and model of your machine into the search bar. We hope that you use these resources to make your document management process smoother. If you see any features or applications that you would like to add to your current copier, or if you would be interested in upgrading your machine, contact your sales representative today.

Electronic Document Management

 

Organizing Your Office in the Digital Age

Preparing your office for Year End is quite the challenge; and it can be even more frustrating if you are still manually filing and processing your documents. Sorting and filing using paper is a laborious and dated task that is time consuming to your office staff. In fact, research has shown that office workers spend 20% of their time on average filing, managing, searching and retrieving paper documents, of which 15% are photocopies. The solution to this grueling task is to utilize your multi-functional copier and establish Electronic Document Management.

Electronic Document Management is the electronic storage and retrieval of documents. Organizations can implement an electronic document management system (EDMS) integrated with their multi-function printer and network to handle the filing process. The EDM system allows you to structure and organize your documents for storage and retrieval. It also gives you the ability to add, edit and view documents. Other functions of the software include the ability to index and search documents, and add differing levels of security to your documents.

Time and Money are the biggest advantages for a company to utilize an EDM system. It will save your employee’s time by allowing them to easily find documents from their computer by using a more effective categorizing system. It will save your company money because you will no longer have to pay for large amounts of storage tools such as filing cabinets, boxes, folders, etc. Security is another great bonus, as document management systems can allow different tiers of access to documents based on setup preferences, to keep files safe and secure.

Kyocera offers many applications to install on your multi-functional printer based on your docu-management needs. One of their most popular apps is SharePoint Connector; this app links with a Microsoft SharePoint server to make it easier for employees to share, collaborate and manage their ideas and information. If you are looking for a fast and easy to use app that is the virtual version of a filing cabinet, then Sentry File is the perfect starting point to begin establishing your EDM system. PreservDOX is another great app that is beneficial for any organization that has documents it can’t afford to lose. Critical documents can be saved in secure, predefined areas and can only be accessed via Pin Code, eliminating the worry of lose and unauthorized access.

Establishing an Electronic Document Management system is a great organizational update for your office to launch; and Kopier Net can help you do it! Contact your sales representative today to get your office setup with the best EDM system for your business needs.