Staples Form Printing Review

As part of Staples outsourced printing, they can create a variety of carbon forms, either by your design or one of their stocks. They have two different avenues of printing, either by their Hub or by their IRS team.

The Hub is a larger, more printing intensive print center attached to Staples. In reality, it is just another Staples Copy Center with more machines, a better staff, and more capabilities.

They can create carbon forms, 2 or 3 part, for about $0.50 each. While the price is good, the quality is usually only standard, also they only have the ability to print out forms you have designed yourself. If you are a new company, or if you supply them with another form that is copyrighted, you will find yourself in a bind. As is obvious, they cannot reproduce anything copyrighted, so you will need to design something for them. You can take advantage of Staples' Design Service, if you have the extra day or two and $50 to shell out.

Timeframe for this always depends on how busy the Hub printing center is. Usually you can expect about a week between printing and shipping for your store to receive the forms. While it is quicker and a bit cheaper than their IRG printer, it may be more of a pain than it's worth.

IRG, or Integrated Resource Group, is an outsource printer Staples has used for years, and many of their higher quality projects are outsourced here. In terms of forms, they are a little more expensive than the above Hub example. You can also choose from 2 or 3 part, and with some even up to 5 part (though I have never seen a use for this, it is available).

Here you can either supply a design or use one of theirs. Now, you may have a great design, but I am going to heavily suggest you go with theirs. The reason? Nearly every time a custom design is used, the forms have to be reordered because the quality is subpar. For some reason, and I cannot explain why, their printers make the text very fuzzy or grayed for this product. Save yourself the aggravation, the extra charge (since using your design is more expensive), and go with one of theirs. Besides, unless you need something very unique or specific, their forms generally include everything you would need.

Timeframe for IRG is about two weeks, and three if they mess up. There is no extra charge if they print it incorrectly or with poor quality, but an extra week is a long time.

Before ordering, I would suggest that you make sure you have enough forms to last you three weeks, just in case there is an error.

I would say that this service is good, but really only if you use their stock forms and not your own.