How Many Cartridges to Keep in the Cupboard

Every office either runs out of toner at the wrong moment or has a cupboard of cartridges for a printer replaced two years ago. Both are avoidable with a little arithmetic.

Work out your actual consumption

Note the printer’s page counter each time you change a cartridge. After two changes you know your real yield in your conditions — which will differ from the published figure, usually downwards, because published yields assume 5% coverage.

Divide monthly page volume by real yield and you have cartridges per month.

A sensible holding

For most small offices: one spare of each colour in use, plus a second black.

Black runs out first on almost every machine, and it is the one that stops work. Colour running out is usually an inconvenience; black is a halt.

If you print more than a couple of thousand pages a month, hold two blacks.

Shelf life is real

Cartridges do not last indefinitely.

• Toner keeps well — often two years or more sealed — but absorbs moisture once opened.
• Inkjet cartridges have a shorter usable life and often a printed expiry date. Ink dries in the cartridge whether it is in the machine or not.

Buying a year’s supply of inkjet cartridges to save on unit price frequently wastes more than it saves.

Storage that protects the stock

• Sealed packaging until the moment of use.
• Upright, as marked on the box.
• Cool, dry, out of sunlight — not on top of the printer, which is the warmest surface in the room.
• Rotate stock. Oldest to the front.

Label the cupboard

The most common cause of a wrong order is that nobody knows which code the printer takes. Write the printer model and its cartridge codes on a label inside the cupboard door.

If there are several printers, list each one. Two similar Brother machines taking TN730 and TN760 respectively will be confused otherwise — and while those two are interchangeable, TN227 and TN229 are not.

When a printer is replaced

Check the cupboard before ordering supplies for the new machine. Unopened cartridges can often be returned within a reasonable period — see our returns policy — and unopened stock for a machine you no longer own is otherwise a total loss.

Standardising printers

If you are buying printers rather than inheriting them, buying the same model twice halves the number of cartridge codes to stock and lets one spare cover both machines. This saves more than the difference in printer price.

A reorder trigger

Reorder when you open the last spare, not when the printer warns. Low-toner warnings are conservative but delivery is not instant, and the gap between the warning and the actual end of the cartridge is unpredictable.

Writing “reorder” on the last cartridge in the cupboard is cruder than a spreadsheet and works better.

Browse the cartridge range, or tell us your printer models and we will confirm the codes.