Office printing policy, a template for every site
- 5.0 on Google from 150+ reviews
- Trading since 2010
10 clauses an office manager can adopt, written for a group with 5 or more offices.
Each clause is one sentence, with brackets for your own names and limits.
One policy is easier to hold when every office's printer is on one agreement.
- Jump to the 10 clauses
- Operated by Global Document Solutions.
Price the printers your policy will cover
Name your offices, and the rule staff break most often.
With every office's printer on one Global Document Solutions agreement, a group can apply one printing policy at every site.
- 5.0 Google rating, from 150+ five star reviews
- Since 2010 Australian owned, based in Queensland
- 500+ Australian businesses supplied and serviced
- 4 hours Generally on site in a capital city, next business day in a regional town
What is an office printing policy?
The written rules for how your staff use every printer and copier.
According to PaperCut Software, a print policy sets out the rules for how a business prints its documents.
According to the Queensland Government's print services guideline, every employee should know the policy and be able to access it.
Induction, or ongoing training, is where it suggests doing that.
It also gives one senior officer the job of managing printing across a department.
A group with ten offices needs the same thing: one owner and one document.
Without it, each office writes its own habits into its printers.
Treat the clauses below as a starting point, and check them against your own HR and privacy rules.
This page covers the rules staff follow.
How a held job releases at a printer is in the card and code release guide.
Locking down each device is covered in the printer hardening checklist.
Last updated 4 October 2026.
A printing policy for staff, ready to copy
This print policy template is ten sentences: copy them into your own document, then fill the brackets.
[Organisation] printing policy
Owner: [role].
Applies to every printer and copier at every office.
Effective [date].
- Print only what you need, and print in colour only where colour carries meaning.
- Scan to email or a shared folder in place of copying pages for colleagues.
- Keep personal printing within [the limit your organisation sets].
- Every printer is set to black only and double sided by default, and staff change it per job.
- Confidential jobs are held until their owner releases them at the printer with a card or a code.
- Held jobs nobody releases are deleted after [hours], and pages left on a tray go to the secure bin.
- Only [role] holds the printer admin password, and only they change a printer's settings.
- Before a printer leaves an office or moves between sites, its storage drive is wiped.
- Report any printer fault to [service desk], with the office name and where the printer stands.
- [Owner] reviews this policy every [12] months and tells each office what changed.
Clauses 1 to 3 are habits at the desk.
Clauses 4 to 8 live in each printer, so they hold whoever is printing.
Clauses 9 and 10 run across the whole group.
Where does each clause take effect?
Three places, and the printer carries half of the policy.
A desk habit relies on memory, and a printer setting applies to every job without it.
That makes the five printer clauses the ones to put in writing with any supplier.
With every office on one agreement, those five questions go to one supplier, once.
| Clause | Inside the printer | Ask in writing |
|---|---|---|
| 4, defaults | Black only and double sided | Who sets them at install |
| 5, held jobs | Card or code release | Whether it is in the quote |
| 6, timeout | How long a job waits | Who can change the time |
| 7, password | The admin login | Who holds it after install |
| 8, the drive | Stored jobs and scans | How it is wiped, and the cost |
Should printers default to black only and double sided?
The Queensland guideline recommends both, with one exception.
According to the Queensland guideline, all print devices should default to monochrome, meaning black only, and double sided printing.
It adds draft quality, with toner saving settings, as a third default.
The guideline accepts that some devices exist for specialised work, such as maps or publications.
Those devices keep their own settings, and staff do not use them for everyday printing.
Colour printing, the guideline notes, costs more than black and white because of the toner.
A default changes the starting point, and staff still choose colour when a job needs it.
Colour also decides which plan suits an office.
Starter covers 2,000 mono pages a month.
Professional adds 200 colour pages, and Enterprise covers 5,000 mono and 500 colour.
Compare them in the plan table for each printer.
From $160 + GST a month per device.
Standard plans, tailored to your fleet. Excess page rates are stated in your quote and are normally the same at every location.
Paper, staples and pages above your agreed volume sit outside that figure.
How do held jobs fit a printing policy?
Clauses 5 and 6 need card or code release.
A held job waits in a queue until its owner stands at the printer.
The Queensland guideline says this keeps sensitive documents from lying around shared printers.
In its examples, a personal code (PIN) or an access card releases the job.
On our agreement, PaperCut handles the card or code step, as an optional extra priced in the quote.
Staff can collect a held job at any office on the agreement.
Your policy then sets how long a job waits before it is deleted.
Pick a time your offices can live with, and write it into clause 6.
Sending jobs from Microsoft 365 without a print server, the computer that queues jobs, is another optional extra.
Who should hold the printer admin password?
One named role, written into clause 7.
The admin password guards every setting the printer clauses depend on.
Whoever holds it can change defaults such as double sided on that office's printer.
Name a role and not a person, so the policy survives a resignation.
If each office has its own password, record where they are kept.
Change the password when the person in that role leaves.
The settings themselves are listed in the six settings to apply at every site.
Write down who holds the password before any printer is installed, so a changed setting always has an owner.
What should staff do when a printer stops?
Clause 9 sends every fault to one place.
Staff report the fault, with the office name and where the printer stands.
Ask them to note what the printer's screen says before they call.
On our agreement, every site reports to the same desk.
Your technician is sent by an authorised dealer or the manufacturer.
A capital city office generally sees the technician within 4 hours.
Regional offices generally wait until the next business day.
Neither time is written into the agreement.
Printers are serviced across Australia.
Put the desk's phone number into clause 9 itself.
A number on the policy beats a search at the moment a printer jams.
What happens to the data when a printer leaves?
Clause 8 clears the drive first.
The Queensland guideline asks agencies to delete a printer's storage before it is reused or retired.
A printer that moves between your offices carries its drive with it, too.
Record its new office in your printer register, the list of printers by office, on the day it moves.
A retired printer comes off the register on the day it is collected.
On our agreement, wiping the drive when the term ends is a paid option.
Exit terms are spelled out, so request the wipe in your quote if clause 8 needs it.
The return side is set out in the clauses that cover a printer going back.
How do you roll a policy out across every office?
One owner, one document, and a report from each site.
- Name the owner, and fill every bracket in the 10 clauses.
- Add the policy to the induction for new staff at every office.
- Set the printer clauses, 4 to 8, the same way on every printer.
- Tell each office manager what changes for their staff.
- Read each site's page counts after a month, and follow up where they differ.
On our agreement, each site gets its own report beside the single invoice.
That report is one place to spot an office printing far more than the rest.
Offices join the agreement one by one over several months, and the policy can join with each.
A new office joins the same agreement, and starts on the same policy.
Not ready for a quote? List the printer leases ending first, in four taps.
For a sustainability report, estimate the emissions from each office's printing.
Printing policy questions office managers ask
Should staff be allowed to print personal documents?
Your organisation decides, and clause 3 leaves a blank for the limit.
Write the limit down so every office applies the same rule.
How long should uncollected print jobs be kept?
Your policy sets the time in clause 6.
Card or code release runs on PaperCut, an optional extra.
Its cost is stated in the quote.
Does a printing policy need IT to enforce it?
Some clauses do.
Default settings and the admin password live inside each printer.
Habits such as scanning in place of copying rely on staff.
Can we adopt this printing policy word for word?
Yes. Fill the brackets with your own names and limits.
Have your own advisers check it suits your organisation.
One policy, every printer
Count the offices the policy covers.
Which offices, and which clauses matter most
List your offices and devices.
Name any clause you want raised on the call.
Operated by Global Document Solutions, an authorised Kyocera partner.
Rather talk it through?
1300 873 460Answered 8.30am to 7pm weekdays, Queensland time.
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What our customers say
Reviews of Global Document Solutions, who run this service.
When something breaks
We've had a great experience with this team.
They're always prompt, helpful and really easy to deal with.
Any issues are sorted quickly and the whole printer leasing process has been seamless.
On price, and on being told things
I highly recommend Cyrus at Global Document Solutions.
The service was brilliant from start to finish, with clear communication and attention to detail.
Pricing was extremely competitive and offered value for money.
Replacing a machine already on contract
We replaced our existing machine (also through GDS) and, as always, the process was seamless.
We had our machine up and running with minimal downtime.
These are reviews of Global Document Solutions, who operate this service, and not of this site.
Each one is copied word for word from their Google Business Profile, under the name Google shows, read on 7 September 2026.