Printing

[Weebiz Media]

Opening a coworking space soon - How do you deal with printing to central printers, what printing services / equipment should be provided, how do you charge, who maintains / restocks printers - Any help & Links really appreciated.

[Gretchen Bilbro]

We just have one multifunction Dell printer that works wirelessly and through Google Print. They drawback is that my laptop is the host the computer so when I am not here Google print doesn't work. We are thinking about getting an inexpensive laptop to stay here and host and then use it to sign up people to our space and have available for presentations, etc. We have had so much trouble figuring the printer. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. 

[Tom Lewis]

Printing is our biggest nemesis.  We have an full on freestanding office photocopier/printer which we lease, and it's very popular as it does A3, sheet fed scanning etc etc.  We pass through the cost of printing with no markup, as our ethic is that people pay their membership fee and that's where we make our money (not a markup on phone calls/printing/snacks etc)

However, we have an ongoing issue with our printer and the newest Mac OS El Capitain (and specifically the account track software which is used to keep track of who is printing how much).  The two just don't play nice, and we've got a lot of frustrated members, many of whom now print through our reception PC, which isn't ideal.  We've tried to resolve it many times, but have got to the point where we either need to buy another printer to go alongside the main one, or remove the account track system.  We're considering the latter- for a space like ours with £20k+ revenue a month, a £100 non markedup spend on printing is not worth upsetting any members.

[Workspace MGMT/Office 55 Coworking]

We have a Canon Imagerunner C5045. In the past we've used codes and access cards for billing but now we are using eZeep software. So far all the members really like it, they can even print from the iPhone app. 

Angela C.

Workspace MGMT

[Tom Lewis]

That's a really useful recommendation Angela, thanks.  We were looking at eZeep, esp as it integrates with Nexudus, and heard differing reviews, some not great, so it's gone onto a 'later' list.  Maybe we should give it a try on a small scale.  It's not cheap though!

[Vaibhav N]

Hi,

We face this issue ourselves. We've kept a system where the coworker needs to email it to us and the space manager takes a print for them and keeps a check manually of how much prints have been taken in a month.Though this system is good to keep a check on the number of prints given, but there is always scope for human error.

The issues are - 

- The coworker feels that he/she wants to keep confidentiality in what they're printing

- When our space manager isn't there(on off days or late hours) the coworker has to get print from the managers computer manually

There are softwares available out there for big offices but they're super-expensive for a coworking space's budget. 

Vaibhav N

NQube Inc.

New Delhi, India