Managed Print Services | National Small Business Month May 2026
Posted on 18 May, 2026 / Under Managed Print Services, Office Automation, Office Technology, Office Technology Westminster, Small Business Solutions

Is Your Print Environment Costing You More Than It Should? A Managed Print Services Reality Check for Colorado Small Businesses — ABT

Is Your Print Environment Costing You More Than It Should? A National Small Business Month Reality Check

By Wendy Campbell, Director of Marketing  |  ABT  |  May 2026  |  7-minute read

National Small Business Month is the one time of year when the conversation turns squarely to what small businesses can do to operate smarter. Events, resources, and advice pour in from every direction — and most of it focuses on the big stuff: financing, hiring, marketing, AI. Meanwhile, one of the most persistent and fixable cost leaks in the average SMB goes completely unexamined: printing.

That’s not a dramatic claim. It’s just what the numbers show. Most small businesses have no idea what they spend on printing — and when they find out, they’re surprised. Not because the number is catastrophic, but because it’s so much higher than it needs to be, and so easy to fix. That’s exactly what managed print services and it’s why May, of all months, is the right time to take a hard look at your print environment.

1–3%

of annual revenue spent on printing by the average SMB

30%

of print jobs go uncollected or are never used

90%

of organizations don’t track their print costs at all

The Print Blind Spot Most Small Businesses Have

Here’s a question worth sitting with: Do you know your actual cost per page? Not the toner cartridge price — the real per-page cost, including the device, supplies, maintenance, energy, and the staff time that goes into managing all of it.

Most small business owners don’t. And that’s not a failure of attention — it’s a structural problem. Printing costs are spread across multiple budget lines. Toner shows up as an office supply. Equipment maintenance is a separate vendor invoice. The device itself might be on a lease line. Paper is somewhere else entirely. Nobody has stitched it together into one number, so nobody knows what it actually costs to run the print environment.

This is the print blind spot — and it exists in small businesses, mid-size businesses, and large enterprises alike. The difference is that large organizations have managed print programs that shine a light on it. Small businesses, typically, do not.

“Most small businesses discover they’re spending significantly more on printing than they thought — and that a meaningful chunk of that spending is on output nobody ever needed.”

The other dimension of this blind spot is waste. A significant portion of what gets printed never serves a purpose — it sits in the output tray until someone throws it away, or it’s a duplicate of something already printed, or it’s a document that should have stayed digital. Managed print services gives you the visibility to see this happening and the tools to stop it.

Want to know what your Colorado business is actually spending on print? ABT’s free print environment assessment gives you cost per page, volume by device, waste patterns, and a clear set of recommendations. No obligation.

What Managed Print Services Actually Does

The term “managed print services” sounds like something only enterprise companies need. It isn’t. At its core, MPS is simply a proactive approach to managing your print environment — instead of reacting to problems (the printer’s jammed, we’re out of toner, who ordered these cartridges?), you have a system that handles all of it in the background so your team doesn’t have to think about it.

Here’s what a well-structured managed print program from ABT actually delivers for a small Colorado business:

What MPS Does What That Means for Your Team
Monitors every device Real-time tracking of toner levels, usage, and device health across your entire fleet — you see everything from one dashboard.
Automates supply replenishment Toner ships before you run out — no last-minute runs to the office supply store, no calling around for the right cartridge number.
Provides proactive maintenance Issues are caught and addressed before they become downtime. Scheduled maintenance keeps devices running at full capacity.
Generates cost reporting You know exactly what you’re spending, by device, by department, and per page — the number you probably don’t have right now.
Enforces smart print policies Automatic duplex defaults, grayscale for non-essential prints, secure release so documents aren’t left unattended — all configurable through tools like PaperCut [UNVERIFIED].

The result is a print environment that costs less to run, wastes less, and requires less of your team’s time and attention. For a small business where every hour of staff time matters, that last point is often what people value most.

The Cost Math: What Are You Actually Spending?

Let’s put some numbers on this — not to alarm you, but to make it concrete. Printing costs for a typical small business break down across four categories, and most businesses only track one of them.

Cost Category What’s Included Tracked?
Supplies Toner, ink, paper, staples Usually ✓
Equipment Lease or purchase cost, depreciation Sometimes
Service & Maintenance Repair calls, service contracts, IT time Rarely ✗
Hidden Costs Wasted output, energy, staff time managing printers Almost never ✗

When you add all four categories together, the real cost per page is almost always higher than what the toner-only number suggests. Industry benchmarks put the fully-loaded cost per page for a typical office laser printer between $0.05 and $0.08 for black and white, and $0.15 to $0.25 for color. For a small office printing 5,000 pages a month — which isn’t a lot — that’s $250–$400 per month before hidden costs.

Now consider that ABT’s managed print clients typically see a 20–30% reduction in print-related costs after implementing an MPS program. On that same $250–$400 monthly spend, that’s real money back in the operating budget every month — not a one-time savings, but a recurring one.

This Small Business Month, run the numbers on your own print environment.

ABT’s free assessment calculates your actual cost per page, identifies your highest-waste devices, and shows you what a managed print program would save. Takes about 30 minutes. Costs nothing.

Request Your Free Assessment →

The Security Angle Small Businesses Often Miss

During National Small Business Week this year, the FTC hosted sessions specifically focused on small business cybersecurity — including how SMBs are targeted by vendor scams and data security gaps they don’t know they have. The printer is one of those gaps.

Your networked printer stores data. It logs print jobs. If it’s not configured correctly, it can be accessed by anyone on your network — or, in some cases, outside it. Documents left sitting in the output tray are a physical security risk. And the toner pirates  who cold-call Colorado businesses with fake supply offers are specifically targeting SMBs because they know small businesses are less likely to have formal vendor verification processes in place.

🔒 Security risks in your print environment:

  • Documents left unattended in the output tray
  • Network-connected devices with default passwords
  • No audit log of who printed what
  • Unauthorized toner vendors gaining supply chain access

✅ What MPS + PaperCut adds:

  • Secure print release — documents print only when you’re standing there
  • Full audit log of every print job
  • Role-based access by device and feature
  • Approved vendor supply chain through ABT only

A managed print program addresses the operational side of printer security — proper device configuration, secure print release, and a single, verified supply chain through ABT. It won’t replace your cybersecurity program (for that, see ABT’s managed IT services ), but it closes the physical and supply-chain vulnerabilities that most small businesses don’t even know they have.

5 Signs Your Print Environment Needs Attention

Not every small business needs a full managed print overhaul. But if more than two of these describe your current situation, it’s worth a conversation:

1 You can’t answer “what did we spend on printing last month?” If that number lives in three different budget lines and nobody’s added them up, you don’t have visibility — and you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
2 Someone on your team manages printer issues. Ordering toner, calling for service, rebooting devices, fielding “the printer’s broken” interruptions — that’s staff time that should be going somewhere else.
3 You’ve received cold calls from unknown toner vendors. This is a known targeting signal — your business is on a list. A managed supply chain through ABT removes the opening entirely.
4 Your equipment is more than five years old. Older devices cost more per page to operate, break down more often, and often lack the network security features that current models include as standard.
5 You’re printing the same documents your team could access digitally. If your print volume is high but a meaningful portion of it is internal documents that could live in a shared drive or a DMS, a managed print assessment will surface that and quantify the savings.

What ABT’s Free Print Environment Assessment Looks Like

We want to be clear about what “free assessment” actually means in practice, because we know that phrase can feel like a sales call with a different name. It isn’t. Here’s the honest version of what happens:

1 You tell us about your current setup. Number of devices, approximate monthly print volume, what brands you’re running, and what’s frustrating you right now. Takes about ten minutes.
2 We pull the data. Using device-level reporting and your existing invoices, we calculate your actual cost per page, identify your highest-cost and highest-waste devices, and flag any security or configuration gaps.
3 We show you the numbers. You get a clear picture of what you’re spending and where the waste is. If the numbers make a compelling case for a managed print program, we’ll show you that too — with specifics, not generalities.
4 You decide what happens next. There’s no pressure. If the numbers don’t make a strong case, we’ll tell you that — and you’ll have accurate information about your print environment either way. That has value regardless of what you do next.

ABT serves Colorado small and mid-size businesses from three Front Range offices — Denver, Colorado Springs, and Westminster. We carry Canon , Kyocera, HP, Epson, and Xerox equipment, and we’ve been doing this since 2005. We know the Front Range business community, we understand what small businesses here are dealing with, and we’re not going anywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is managed print services only for large companies?

Not at all. MPS is particularly valuable for small businesses precisely because they typically don’t have a dedicated IT person managing the print environment. ABT works with businesses of all sizes across Colorado — from solo-run offices to multi-location SMBs. The structure of a managed print program scales to fit your device count and volume.

Do I need to replace my current equipment to start a managed print program?

Not necessarily. ABT’s assessment evaluates your existing equipment and tells you which devices make sense to keep, which should be replaced, and which are costing you more than they’re worth. In many cases, adding monitoring and policy tools like PaperCut to your existing fleet delivers significant savings before any equipment changes are needed.

How quickly will I see savings from a managed print program?

Most ABT managed print clients see measurable cost reduction within the first 60–90 days — primarily from eliminating waste, automating supply replenishment at better pricing, and reducing service call frequency. The full picture becomes clearer at six months, when you have enough data to compare pre- and post-MPS costs directly.

What brands does ABT support under a managed print program?

ABT is an authorized dealer for Canon, HP, Kyocera, Epson, and Xerox — and we service all of these brands under our managed print programs. We also work with Roland wide format equipment. If you’re running a brand we don’t carry, we’ll let you know upfront whether we can support it or not. We don’t oversell our capabilities.

This Small Business Month, find out what your print environment is actually costing you.

ABT’s free print environment assessment takes about 30 minutes and gives you a clear, honest picture of your current costs — and what a managed print program would change. No jargon, no pressure, no obligation.

Request Free Assessment →

 Call 303-778-0600 →

Denver / Front Range

Or submit your details below and we’ll reach out:

Tell us your device count, approximate monthly volume, and biggest pain point. We’ll take it from there.


ABT Front Range Offices:

Denver/Centennial: 11999 E. Caley Ave Suite A  |  303-778-0600

Colorado Springs: 1047 Elkton Drive  |  719-434-4080

Westminster/NoCO: 12000 N. Pecos St., Suite 330  |  720-389-2460

Wendy Campbell is Director of Marketing at Automated Business Technologies (ABT), a Colorado-owned B2B technology company serving the Front Range since 2005. ABT is an authorized dealer for Canon, HP, Kyocera, Epson, Xerox, Roland, and Verkada.