Daily Canuck

I am in charge of procurement for an architectural design and engineering firm in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. We run a rather large operation and have some three hundred employees in our facility. We are currently occupying office space on a lease in a high rise building in downtown Fort Worth. We have sole occupancy of the twenty-ninth and thirtieth floors.

Our current budget for consumable office supplies is six hundred thousand a year, or fifty thousand a month. This budget specifically excludes our data warehousing costs and printer leases. These all fall under separate outside vendors. While this may seem high, it includes all of the consumables that our people need in the course of their duties. A few examples of just the paper we use are standard copy paper, legal paper, writing tablets, memo books, grid paper, and post-it notes.

While all of this paper adds up, our biggest expense is the CAD (Computer Aided Design) paper rolls. These rolls are what we print our designs out on, in various sizes, for our internal and external customers. We have machines that print eighteen, twenty-four, thirty, and thirty-six inches wide. One design typically goes through many changes, so each project might have well over ten versions with ten to one hundred copies of each. That is a lot of paper!

When you are shopping for CAD paper vendors, I highly recommend choosing a firm that has a good reputation, a great customer service department, and an established supply chain. If you have a major print project and need additional rolls, you want to make sure that the vendor can get you what you need in an expedient manner.

The largest portion of our budget is for our computer leases. Of our three hundred employees, two hundred have laptops and docking stations and the other hundred have desktop workstations. The laptop setup costs us one thousand per unit per year and the desktop is eight hundred.

We cycle these computers off lease every year on a staggered basis. There is no disposal fee if we renew our lease. This means every year those with a machine that is two years old will be upgraded to a new machine. This is their opportunity to request a new type of computer if they so desire.

We own all of the office furniture in our facility. That was a huge cost up front, but desks don’t become obsolete in a few years like computers do. If you’re setting up an office, I recommend buying your furniture and leasing your computers. That keeps your technology department up to date and out of the computer resale business.

The remainder of our budget is spent on what most offices spend their money on, pens, pencils, dry erase supplies, highlighters, etc. We keep these items in stock in our four supply rooms and rely on an honor system to ensure that our employees don’t pilfer or hoard the supplies. So far, we have had no problems.

Good luck in meeting your procurement needs!

Plotter Paper HP Plotter Paper HP Design Jet Paper Wide Format Paper OCE Paper

Business machines come and go at a rapidly-expanding pace. The cash registers you bought for your business last year have likely been replaced by a newer model. The receipt printers that were the best money could buy six months ago are no longer available. The biggest challenge is finding paper rolls that fit your equipment.

Office supply stores need to make the best use of every square foot of floor space they have available and carrying supplies for outdated machines is usually not a priority for them. While finding replacement paper rolls may be a challenge, replacing your machines every year just because you can’t find the right paper for it doesn’t make financial sense.

Fortunately, there is an online office supplies retailer that specializes in paper rolls of all sizes. BuyRolls.com carries a wide selection of paper rolls, including thermal paper, cash register and ATM receipt paper, and multi-copy rolls. Buy Rolls has paper to fit the point of sale machines of many major equipment manufacturers, such as Star, Micros, Epson, and Triton.

Because Buy Rolls doesn’t have to maintain a storefront location, they can carry a much wider variety of paper than the local office supply store can and often at a better price. All of their paper is made to meet or exceed OEM standards and is suitable for machines from all makers.

If you’re not certain which paper size and type is right for your machines, Buy Rolls can help you out. They have customer service specialists available to steer you in the right direction. Simply give them the make and model of your machine and they will tell you which size paper is appropriate. You can buy as little as a single roll of paper but Buy Rolls offers discounts for bulk purchases and they often have specials on different paper rolls. Buying your paper rolls a case at a time means you’ll never run out of paper right when you need it the most.

Having access to a supplier of POS paper rolls also has other benefits for you as a small business owner. You can purchase previously-used POS equipment at a fraction of the cost of new. Used equipment can be found at auctions, business supply stores and even in ads in your local newspaper. While the model may no longer be offered by the supplier, it is likely that you will be able to find paper for it at Buy Rolls. Keep the company’s number in your wallet or organizer and you can call them while you’re out looking at used equipment to make sure they carry the correct paper before you buy.

There are two ways to place an order with Buy Rolls. You can purchase online through their secure shopping cart feature or you can call to place your order. Orders are shipped out from fifteen warehouses across the country for faster service.

So don’t upgrade your business machines if you don’t have to. Save the money and check out Buy Rolls.

Thermal Paper Printer Ribbons Okidata Ribbons POS Paper Rolls Thermal Paper Rolls