How To Optimize Your Business Cheque Printing Costs?

Tirtharaj Raman

Senior Writer

Cheque Printing

Businesses often hire contractors, suppliers, partners, and others temporarily to work on their projects. Small businesses follow such practices occasionally, but large enterprises do this more often. Usually, the payments to those accompanying partners are made via issuing cheques. Printing such cheques is often an expense that businesses have to bear.

Looking for Cheque Printing Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of best Cheque Printing Software solutions.

In this rapidly digitizing world, cheques are still the most reliable method for paying securely to your suppliers, business partners, employees, and others. Many businesses issue different kinds of cheques to different kinds of businesses on a regular basis.

Issuing cheques is something businesses should be more careful about and monitor. Like any other expense associated with running an organization, printing cheques is an expense businesses have to bear or else you can print your own cheques.

Cheque printing is financial neglect that is surprisingly the most common practice of small to even large enterprises. Failing to optimize cheque issuance and printing costs can hit badly on your profit margin.

However, when it comes to reducing the costs of printing those cheques, businesses need to make more proactive choices.

Optimizing the process of printing cheques provides businesses with a competitive advantage even if they need 10 or 10,000 cheques to print.

How to calculate cheque printing cost?

Check printing costs can be calculated in four simple steps.

1. Identify the manufacturer and model number of your printer

Printing costs are calculated differently by each manufacturer and printer. Be sure to gather this information before starting to calculate and also be secure the payments via online. The details can be found directly on your printer, in the manual, or in the control panel of your computer.

2: Obtain an understanding of your yield-per-cartridge

The page yield figures are often posted on manufacturers’ websites and on toner cartridge packaging. In most cases, manufacturers determine black and white and color page yields by using some combination of the following tests:

  • In order to calculate black and white page yield, manufacturers print a text document that applies toner to approximately five percent of each page until the toner cartridge is exhausted.
  • In order to calculate color page yields, they print a document containing both text and graphics. The toner covers approximately 20 percent of a page until it empties.

3. Estimate Each Toner Cartridge’s Price

It is essential to identify the cost of your cartridges when you are calculating your specific cost-per-print. Obtaining these details may require assistance from accounting or purchasing.

Using average retail prices for your toner cartridges will serve you well if this information is difficult to obtain. The figures can be found on print manufacturers’ websites or on sites dedicated to office supplies.

The cost of the black toner cartridge is all you need to calculate cost-per-print in black and white. It is necessary to determine the cost of all the cartridges: black, cyan, magenta, and yellow.

4. Determine The Cost-per-print 

Having collected all the information above, you can calculate the cost-per-print. For calculating the cost-per-print of a black-and-white print, you divide the price of the toner cartridge by its page yield.

Black-and-white example:

Values are assumed.

Toner Cost Cartridge ÷ Page Yield = Cost-Per-Print

X ÷ Y = Z

84.99 ÷ 2200 = 0.038

The cost-per-print of a color print could be determined using the black and white cost outlined above, which is very simple.

Furthermore, assuming that all color cartridges are priced similarly and have the same yield, it is possible to determine the cost per page for a color cartridge (as done above) and multiply it by 3. Lastly, add the cost per black-and-white print.

Color example:

Values are assumed. 

[((Toner Cartridge Cost of 1 Color Cartridge ÷ Page Yield of 1 Color Cartridge) x 3)] + Black and White Cost-Per-Print = Color Cost-Per-Print

[(A ÷ B) x3] + Z = Color Cost-Per-Print

[(119.99 ÷ 2600) x 3] + 0.038 = 0.176

But before starting with the optimization process, it’s essential to understand what goes behind printing cheques. Understanding how cheque printing works and how you can improve this aspect of your business will help you improve your bottom line.

Understanding Cheque Printing Expenses

Total expenses of printing cheques include different elements such as cheque paper, printing machine, printing software, ink, envelopes, and others. In addition, your business may be subject to many other expenses such as processing fees or ACH charges, depending on the business size.

According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, US companies cling to writing paper cheques.

As per the report, the average cost of printing cheques has significantly increased and costs anywhere between $4 to $20. The report also states that it costs $26 billion to $54 billion for businesses to issue and deposit cheques.

Another report by Bill.com states that companies roughly spend over $2000 per month and $24000 per year for printing cheques.

That’s a staggeringly high number to pay for labor, bank fees, cheque printing, and postage costs. Here’s a pie chart of how much does it cost to pay with paper cheques:

Note: The numbers shown above are based on the average of issuing & printing 500 cheques per month.

The costs defined in the above chart can differ greatly from company to company. Estimate how many cheques your company writes in a month and how much labor goes into preparing & making those cheques. Find out how much is the bank fees, postage, and other costs associated with printing cheques to get a clearer picture.

There is also additional cost in manual cheque printing, i.e., opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is what your staff does when they have time to kill and aren’t printing cheques. How could they utilize those lost hours to improve your overall business processes? Assessing and considering the costs of such lost labor hours, you’ll truly get the costs for writing and printing cheques for your company.

One way to avert such a scenario is outsourcing your cheque printing requirements to an already established firm with an infrastructure. However, you have to be careful about your stance on reducing the costs. Here’re some helpful tips & strategies to reduce printing costs:

5 Tips & Strategies for Reducing Cheque Printing Costs

As suggested earlier, optimizing the printing costs for cheques can save thousands of dollars for your organization. Moreover, the extreme level of variation in costs for printing cheques makes adopting wise strategies extremely beneficial.

So, here are some strategies to reduce costs for printing cheques:

1. Outsource to Professional Cheque Printing Firm

Professional firms already have established networks and infrastructure to support your needs perfectly. They provide you with quality work, even for personalized cheques at a staggeringly low price.

Outsourcing the printing of cheques will reduce and save a whopping amount spent on labor. Moreover, such firms also provide you relevant services, including statement printing, address cleansing, and other payment processing software.

Setting up a similar guide for writing checks in easy steps and infrastructure in-house would cost you a fortune, if not less, that takes just pennies when outsourced to a professional firm. Thus, it would be one of the wisest decisions you can take to lower your costs for printing cheques.

2. Purchasing Material In Bulk

One other way to reduce your cost of printing cheques is to purchase off the required material in bulk. Start with finding out what material you’d need to print cheques and estimate their quantities for the period you want to purchase.

For example, say you want to buy off materials required for the next 3-5 years. Then start by looking at the current rate of your monthly consumption of materials.

Such data is essential while ordering the right quantity of materials. For instance, ordering printing materials such as ink, cheque paper, envelopes, and other things will help keep your cheque printing costs in check.

3. Negotiating with Banks

Ask your banks for waivers on cheques issuance and processing fees. Contrary to what you may have thought of, you can still negotiate some of the processing and cheque issuance costs with your banks. Negotiating with your bank may help you reduce some of the costs spent on bank fees and help you save a substantial amount.

4. Get a Cheque Printing Software

A cheque printing software can help you digitalize your payment process through cheques. A cheque printing software can help you create a hybrid system for cheque management.

Unsurprisingly, while it may seem complicated, many businesses have started to use a cheque printing software.

Adopting such a practice for your business helps eliminate the material requirements for printing. Also, it will reduce massive labor, postage, and other costs.

Also, a cheque printing software can keep track of all your payments in a safe manner, needless to say.

5. Use Automated Bill Payment Methods

Electronic payment methods have revolutionized the banking and payment system from upside down. The biggest benefit of using such electronic automated bill payment methods is that they cut down almost all the cheque printing costs. You’ll be able to save high costs from labor charges to bank fees, materials, and postages. Here’s a pie chart to explain what costs are associated with electronic payment methods.

In addition to reducing printing costs massively, electronic payment methods also offer the following benefits:

  • Heightened Security: Paper cheques have a tendency to get lost in the mail or in the office. Further, moving to an electronic payment mode will help with the safety of your data and funds. Automated bill payment platforms offer heightened security of your data and funds.
  • Improved Operations: With electronic payments on the go, there will be no late payments because someone was sick or due to the outdated accounting system. They have the precision to send funds only to the desired address. Thus, no dealing with wrong addresses or lost and untrackable funds. Moreover, there will be no need to cancel or reissue cheques.
  • Accurate Financial Information: Get the financial reports and vital information on-demand with the automated payable accounts. No need to rely on others to get your balance sheets and cost trend report. Your online dashboard is a perfect place to gain such information.

These were some of the best actions businesses can take to optimize their cheque printing costs and make them more manageable. Ensure that you adopt multiple strategies simultaneously to keep an eye on your expenses and get to a position where your organization can succeed.

Conclusion

Cheque printing is an integral part of conducting business and making payouts to your associates, suppliers, partners, and others. Cheque processing is expensive! Cheques cost between $2.00 and $3.85 more to process than electronic payments. PaySavvy (now Rise) determined the total cost of issuing one cheque is $17 when you take into account secondary costs. According to Payments Canada, cheques cost between $15-25 per cheque and can be as high as $50 in some cases. By migrating a portion or all of your cheques to electronic payments, or by using a cheque printing software you can reduce or eliminate your cheque printing and mailing costs.

Strategies such as outsourcing the work to a professional firm, ordering your material supplies in bulk, negotiating with banks to reduce bank fees, adopting a hybrid system with the help of a cheque printing software, or automated bill payment methods work like a charm. Your business gains the upper hand and competitive edge by reducing your cheque printing costs and helps it grow innumerably.

Get started to create a cost-effective, seamless and safest payment experience by using a cheque printing software, the measure from above we would recommend the most. Find out the best cheque printing software at www.softwaresuggest.com.

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