If you're not keeping an eye on your office supply and stationery inventories and their use you'll be unpleasantly surprised at the hit to your operating budget. You need to be vigilant about your stationery and general office supplies as staff are prone to massive wastage and disregard to the actual real costs of office stationery.
1. It isn't always necessary to purchase 'brand name' products when there are equally good - house' brand products. We highly recommend you identify your minimum performance requirements and the actual application of the products your purchasing and then identify the opportunity to purchase a - house brand' product that meets your minimum requirements. You'll be surprised as to hoe much money you'll save particularly on high repeat order consumables such as inks and papers.
2. Create a delivery system for the business. On the assumption that you have a supplier that does provide a daily delivery service and an online ordering function you'll always be able to get the odd emergency product quickly. However, you need to have regular delivery schedule for your office stationery. This will force you to have a office supplies system in place providing you with a cost effective system of staff requests, placing orders, handling costs of deliveries and storing your office supplies as well as providing staff members with their office supply needs on time and without frustration.
3. Building a good relationship with all suppliers is good business practice and particularly with consumables that are high repeat by nature, it is valuable for both you and your supplier to know each other well. Hence, an annual review of your spending patterns, item pricing reviews, new products in the catalog, recommendations from your supplier who should know your ordering patterns and advising your supplier of any changes to your business that they should know about. Eg an increase in staff, a new office that needs supply etc will ensure a cost effective situation for your office supplies.
4. Every quarter look at your office stationery order, take a snapshot of 10 products and do a price check by phone. This will keep your purchasing pencil razor sharp
5. Keeping records of staff allocations of office stationery is good business practice. Every business should have an asset register and coupled with the hardware and software staff allocation records you should add stationary to the spreadsheet. This will be a valuable review tool in understanding the costs per person of your business and will eliminate wastage and keep staff accountable of their usage of company tools.
6. Keep your office supplies and stationery locked in a specific area of your office. And do not let staff just access the stationery cabinet at their own will. Your office supply and office stationery purchases are real costs to the business and hence need to be viewed that way. In fact staff will respect and appreciate your business if they know that they will always get the tools they need as long as they follow the procedures that have been put in place.
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