Every organisation, however big or small, needs their share of office supplies. The daily routine of an entrepreneurship requires the use of variety of stationery, like tons of paper, pencils, pens, ink, staplers, pins, erasers, clipboards, and many more.
These stationeries amount to a major chunk of the office operational expenses. According to a survey, Office supplies can be accounted up to 40% of the total operational cost of an organisation on an average. Mostly, 20% of these expenses are excess expenses, which are not really required by a company. If managed properly, this operational cost can be reduced largely, thus, saving a considerable amount of money.
How to Save on Stationery Supplies?
A penny saved is a penny earned. Everyone wants and needs to save money wherever possible. Even small steps and modification can save you a considerable amount, which can be utilised for other important expenses required in a business. Following are few easy steps, which when applied in practical use can reduce the cost of your office stationery to a large extent:
1. Assign Task: assign the task of managing the stationery supplies to a certain employee. However, make sure not to over burden the employee with work. Either choose a candidate who already has less work and responsibilities, or lessen his or her load of work a little to compensate for this additional task.
2. Maintain Inventory: ask the responsible candidate to maintain an inventory of the supply stock. Start with the present day itself. Ask that person to make an inventory of the supplies you have currently. In addition, to make the task more organised and faster ask him or her to re-arrange the present stock and categories them and place them in specified places, so that it is easier to find them when needed and convenient to know how much stock of each item is left. Maintain an inventory on monthly basis, and after analysing a month’s requirement for each of the supply, order only the specific quantity of each item needed, keeping few as extras in the stock.
3. Collection: an organisation or company or its employees are invited and attend many business meetings, conferences, forums, exhibitions, etc. In these events, you are gifted loads of stationeries for promotion like pens, notepads, pencils, paperweights, and other goodies. You or the assigned person can stash all these items, store them according to your categories for office usage, and add them to your inventory.
4. Recycle: you can always recycle the stationeries. Use the backside of the discarded printed papers for calculations, drafting or any other rough work. You can use previous year’s diaries and notepads, get the pens refilled, etc. by recycling you not only save on money, but also contribute towards maintaining the greenery of the Earth.
5. Buy in large quantity and when sales are on: whenever you buy something in bulk, it costs you less. Moreover, always look out for sales, discounts, or combinations, etc and buy in bulk.
By following these simple steps, every organisation can save up to 20% of their operational costs.
Article Source: Author: JessicaThomson
Peter Millikin - Internet expert, Dad and founder of various money saving blogs.
How did I make the blogs work for my clients?
"HARD WORK," "LONG HOURS," and lots of "DETERMINATION"
Some great suggestions on saving on your office supplies spend. Two more I think worth mentioning are;
Don’t always go for brand names – Most office supplies companies will offer branded and none branded options for the majority of stationery items and also Ink and Toner. The savings available by purchasing the none branded items are significant and certainly worth investigating with your supplier. If you are unsure of the quality ask for samples so you can do some user testing.
Shop online – If you have used the same office supplies company for years then do some price benchmarking with some Online Office Supplies companies. To be succesful online you need to be cheap which means that very often the customer can make big savings.