Many businesses could easily reduce their printing expenditures by 10–30%, but it’s pretty hard to do that when you don’t know where your print dollars are actually going. It’s also pretty difficult to advocate for change without numbers that can show other stakeholders why a change would be worth making. 

In this blog, you’ll get a step-by-step guide to calculating your print costs on your own, or you can find a link to our handy print costs calculator at the end of this blog!

How Much Do Companies Spend on Printing?

Well, most of them actually have no idea. 90% of companies fail to track their printing costs, and that’s a big miss, considering that print is often a business’s third-highest expense after rent and payroll! 

So if you’re looking for ways to cut costs in 2025 and beyond, printing is a great place to start. 

Print-Related Business Expenses That Are Harder To Track

Here are a few other business expenses that can sometimes be related to printing. 

Print-related issues can cause missed deadlines and employee frustration. While you won't find these issues itemized on a budget, they do affect your bottom line. 

If your printers are causing a significant amount of frustration, they could also lead to higher rates of turnover. And if your IT department is the one providing most of the troubleshooting, those tasks could frequently take them away from more important things, like applying security patches in a timely fashion. 

Then there are things like how much power and space your printers are consuming. If your printer is over seven years old, replacing it can help you reduce your power bill. And if you’re using too many printers, scaling back will help you save both.

How To Save on Printing Costs the Easy Way

If your print fleet is small, assessing your print costs might be doable in an afternoon. But that’s not the case for companies with complex print environments or multiple locations. 

You can start with some print cost-cutting basics, but in order to cut costs more dramatically while improving efficiency, more and more companies are choosing to work with a Managed Print Services (MPS) provider instead. The benefits might surprise you, and it’s a service that can save more than it costs. 

Here are just a few perks — in addition to helping you cut costs, a good provider can help you automate supply ordering, monitor print equipment to anticipate maintenance and repair needs, increase print security, and more. At Marco, we also provide a free print assessment, so you won’t have to do any of this math yourself. 

Interested in getting a downloadable tool to help you track print costs? We’ve got one for you. Click the link below to access it!