Let’s face it: Businesses can’t completely eliminate expensive color printing. But there is a strategy that can make sure it’s only used when it’s good for the company:

Charge back the costs to departments, offices or individuals.

Simply track how many times color pages are printed, and have the cost applied to a department’s budget, rather than the company’s general operating budget. Clearly, department with a well-establish need for color (such as marketing and publishing) would get an add-on to their budgets.

Of course, that will require buy-in from higher-ups. So explain the benefits: Most departments don’t pay attention to how much color ink they use, but they will if they have to pay for it. That means managers will convince employees to make smarter printing choices.

To learn more and find out about solutions that can track color ink use, check out this white paper from HP.

Tags: charge back, color, HP