Expanding your business from a small shoestring operation to a larger, more professional setup can strain your budget. Looking for ways to cut costs, or at least slow down the financial outgo, is natural. But one item you should definitely buy as you expand is a copier, if you don't already have one. Smaller businesses may make do with individual printers that have scanning functions for copies, but if you're trying to level up, you need to upgrade your equipment, too.

Able to Handle Higher Loads

That scanner you have on your printer may be able to copy a document relatively quickly, but there really is a limit to what an individual printer can copy. Even if the scanner has an autofeed tray, there's only so much you can put into the tray at any one time — and if you have to make multiple copies of a collated document, you're going to end up with a pile of papers that you get to sort yourself. With a copier, you can copy much larger documents with little trouble.

Frequency of Use

How often do you envision your staff having to copy paper documents? If it's not that often, then you might still question the use of a copier. But if you know that people will be copying items a lot, a central copier can be easier on the repair budget. Copiers are built to handle larger copying loads as well as frequent use. A printer really isn't meant to be that busy; while they're built to be used daily, individual printers and scanners aren't supposed to be in use constantly. If people will need to copy a lot of documents, using only printers with scanners could lead to a lot of repair calls.

Alternatives When Someone's Printer Breaks Down

If you decide that you're going to have everyone use their own printers to scan and copy documents, what will you do when one of the printers breaks down? Will you have that person go to another office to use someone else's printer in the meantime? Your staff might not be so happy about being interrupted. If you have a copier, those machines often come with excellent repair service that gets the copier up and running again quickly. Small printers tend not to have that kind of service.

As more and more work is done online and sent via email or file transfer services, the need for a copier might seem to be fading. However, it's not, and having at least one central copier is necessary for companies that really want to get work done fast.

To learn more about copiers, contact a company in your area like Major Business Machines.