The Cost of Paper

John — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:51:10 +0000

We all heard the stories, computers would eliminate paper. There would be no need to print pages and pages of hard copy, all your important documents would be available at your fingertips. Unfortunately with the evolution of the computer and increasingly cheaper plug and play printers, paper usage has increased tremendously.

With a simple mouse click or two, reports are generated, invoices printed in triplicate and letters, complete with typographical errors are created, most only to be thrown away either at the source or final destination. What is the true cost for a single page document to your companies bottom line? What are the ways to reduce this waste of both resources and money?

Larry Phelps has kindly provided us with these statistics on the staggering cost and quantity of paper in the workplace. For more information please visit his site and his expertise on efficient and environmentally document imaging. larryphelps.wordpress.com

Over its life-span, a single sheet of paper ends up costing an average of $30. -Delphi Group.
Every year 7.5 billion documents are created and 15 trillion copies are made.
E-mails will double to 60 billion a day in 2 years.
7% of documents are permanently lost.
The average document is copied 18 times.
90% of business information is still on paper.
Misfiled documents cost $120 each.
4-drawer file cabinets cost $25,000 to fill.
and $2,000 per year to maintain. (Source: Coopers & Lybrand 2004)
$14,000 worth of productivity is lost per worker per year due to their inability to find the data they require to do their job.-IDC Canada.
Professionals spend 50 percent of their time searching for information, and take 18 minutes to locate each document on average. -Gartner Research.
US companies spend approximately $20 on labor costs in order to file a document, $120 on the labor required to find a misfiled document and $220 to reproduce a lost document. -Coopers & Lybrand.
Companies typically misfile up to 20 percent of their records – thus losing them forever.

With these facts in mind, it only makes sense, both financially and environmentally to examine the options for online invoicing, electronic payments and software based accounting. All of these provide a significant reduction in paper, paper related costs and environmental impact.

See for yourself , try the Greenbill Green Billing Calculator and find out how much paper is really costing your company.

Greenbill » paperless invoicing

The Cost of Paper