We would like to welcome the UOE customers and confirm that the UOE Account Management team will be transferring across to Quills to ensure a smooth transition and that its ‘business as usual’ from day one.

Quills Managing Director, Andy Efstathiou said: “UOE and Quills share the same customer-focused attitude as well as common platforms in online technology, national distribution network and many of the same suppliers. We’re really excited to welcome the UOE business team who join us as part of the growing Quills family.”

Managing Director and Postmaster, Elliot Jacobs from UOE explained “until now our business has had two distinct and separate channels providing business supplies and furniture via our commercial sales team, as well as our expanding retail operations. Divesting our B2B division will enable us to focus our entire team on ensuring that we strive to be the very best example of independent retailing on the High Street.”

The post Quills acquires UOE as part of its continued growth plans appeared first on Quills UK.

We’ve snuck a hashtag in the article and your job is to tag us in a post on Twitter or Facebook and comment what the hashtag was we used for your chance to win a £50 Love2Shop voucher!

You must also be following the account you used to submit your entry.

Entries are open until Sunday 29^th September 2019 and the winner will be announced on Monday 30^th September.

Good luck!

Terms and conditions:

1. Entries should be based in the UK&I and must not be a Quills employee
2. Closing date for entries is 11.59 pm on the 29/09/19
3. Only one entry per person can be submitted on Twitter and Facebook
4. A winner will be selected at random on the 30/09/2019 and the winner will be notified via the relevant social media channel that their entry was submitted on
5. Entries must be submitted via Quills UK Facebook or Quills UK Twitter and the participant must be following the social media account used to qualify
6. A £50 Love2Shop voucher will be sent to the winner by post and no cash alternative or prize will be provided
7. Quills Group is a trading name for Quills Office Supplies Ltd and our registered address is Unit 2 Spitfire Business Park, 1 Hawker Road, Croydon, Surrey, CR0 4WD

The post Find Quills in the Evening Standard & win a £50 Love2Shop voucher appeared first on Quills UK.

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Summer has officially started and the MET office has already announced some scorching hot days ahead this June. So why not beat the heat and be prepared with these top tips to help you stay cool in the office…

Keep the blinds down

It may sound obvious but lower the blinds in the office before the sun rises as the piercing sun will only heat up the office. Having the sunlight shining through the office all day will cause what is known as the ‘Greenhouse Effect’.

Workwear

Wardrobe choices are essential when it’s a hot summer’s day. Whilst some outfit choices may be restricted due to the office dress code, carefully consider what you’re going to wear and opt for clothes which are made of a looser material e.g. cotton to help you stay comfortable throughout the day as well as lighter colours which will reflect the suns radiation. Thick and heavy clothes such as woolly skirts or fully lined suits are a definite no-no!

Stay hydrated

This sounds like an obvious one, but many people don’t realise that you can quickly dehydrate even if you’re just sitting at a desk all day. It’s essential to drink plenty of water, approximately around 2 litres minimum a day. Also, keep your water in the fridge or freezer so that it stays nice and cool for when you come to drink it.

Should I drink hot drinks?

Yes! It’s a common myth that drinking caffeine dehydrates you, so don’t worry, you can still enjoy that morning cup of tea or coffee to help get your day started.

Apply water on your wrists

You may look slightly bonkers carrying out this tip, but if you’re in the office kitchen or bathroom, it’s most certainly worth it. Run cool water over your wrists every couple of hours for approximately 5 seconds. This will help cool down the main veins running through them as well as your pulse points and will ultimately help to lower your blood flow temperature. Try it!

Invest in a personal fan

One of the best investments you’ll make this year…we promise! Having your own personal fan enables you to have a constant fresh breeze without having to share with other employees and all cramp into one corner where there’s air con in the office. Luckily, there is a huge range of fans available at great prices including personal clip-on fans and desktop fans; both which are ideal for the office and for travelling.

To get yourself and the office ready for those long, hot summer days ahead, if you have an account why not head over to the Quills website where we have a huge supply of fans including office fans, personal clip-on fans, floor standing fans, air con units and much more. We also have great prices available and bulk offer discounts. Simply click here to find out more or get in touch today to see where you can start saving!

The post Top tips for staying cool in the office appeared first on Quills UK.

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Employers are constantly looking for ways to run more efficiently and minimise overheads and running costs – so have you looked at your office supplies budget recently? Reliable office supplies providers should be helping you save money and finding solutions tailored to your needs. Today, we’re going to explain a few small changes you can make that have the potential to save you a significant amount of money.

If you are looking to optimise your office and ensure it’s running as cost-efficiently as possible, feel free to contact us for further help and information.
10 things to consider when it’s time to save money and review your office supplies provider . . .

1. Consolidating the products the business orders

Firstly: does your office supplies provider offer you the option to consolidate all of your orders? Or are you paying for delivery of ten different products from 10 different vendors?

If it’s the latter, you might want a change. Not only is this inefficient for your business’s carbon footprint, but the cost of all these deliveries can quickly add up. (Plus the time your employees will spend unpacking and putting away the products.) Your office supplies provider should suggest weekly or monthly ordering. On top of this, you can also consolidate orders so that you receive them together in one delivery.

2. Invoicing

While not something that immediately springs to mind for many businesses, your invoices may be costing more than you think. The cost to process an invoice is typically £15; simply implementing monthly invoicing will save your business time and money. These savings are known as ‘soft costs’.

Using an office supplier that will consolidate your purchases and invoice you as infrequently as possible can save your business money.

3. Own brand or branded supplies

Although having branded office supplies can sometimes seem like a necessity, is that really always the case? Non-branded products do the job at a fraction of the cost. Your office could potentially be spending a lot of extra money on supplies simply because they have a brand name.

4. Branded Promotional Products

Adding your company logo to promotional gifts like pens, USBs, umbrellas or drinks flasks is a great way to showcase your company brand. But are you paying over the odds with a provider that you have no relationship with? Certain suppliers may not guide you through the process – leaving you open to possible pitfalls.

5. Making your online ordering system work for you

In the age of technology, most purchasing is done online – but are you getting the most out of your online ordering system? While this post can’t tell you what advantages your online ordering system has, it is worth contacting your office supplies provider and enquiring about the ways in which their system can benefit you.

At Quills our online ordering system offers a range of additional services that can help you to shop and save efficiently:

• A pre-agreed ‘contract list’ will be online showing your employees which products your business uses the most and these items have special contract pricing applied to them
• ‘Fast Order’ does just that and allows employees the ability to easily purchase the products they buy the most simply by adding the quantity next to the item code and it will drop in the shopping cart
• Authorise – There is the option to set up ‘authorisers’ who can accept, amend or decline an order placed by a ‘user’; again, this is a service that allows you to monitor all of your outgoing costs and, more importantly, control them
• Orders can be raised against individual cost centers; this enables you to track how much each branch/department is spending and on what. When running an office with multiple departments, being able to track the expenditure of each department is incredibly useful for identifying potential problems and where budgeting needs to be more strictly applied
• A detailed monthly management report can be provided, which will highlight what each location and cost center has spent on a monthly and year-to-date basis. This negates the need for your management accounts department to calculate and re-charge costs which saves the business time and money

6. Print

In addition to the above, printing is a common office cost.

Most businesses will require some form of printing, whether this is reports, brochures, business cards or promotional flyers. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that you’re managing your print costs properly. It’s often surprising to find out how much money your business could be saving on print; often, this is not something businesses can accurately tackle in-house. Due to this, it may be worth getting a free, third-party audit from us here at Quills.

7. Managed Print Services (MPS)

While a lot of offices are moving to a more paper-less environment, the typical workplace still uses print. Managed Print Services (MPS) have the ability to significantly lower your office’s running costs by optimising your usage of printing systems.

Managed print systems offer functionalities such as:

• Forcing duplex (double-sided) printing to reduce paper wastage and therefore paper costs
• Restricting use of colour printing; businesses have the option to restrict colour printing from specific document types such as emails and accounting
• Follow me print solutions that increase productivity, promote security and reduce waste. A pin number has to be added to retrieve your print job at your nearest printers and your job will be retrieved and printed when you’re ready
• Tracking and reporting that allows you to monitor your business’s printing habits and identify any necessary changes.
• Free software can be installed to monitor ink levels. At a certain level a notification email will be sent to your stationery supplier to confirm that a toner / ink cartridge is running low and needs ordering. This also means there’s no need to store multiple toners because your system will notify you when the time is right to order.

8. Can your office supplier stock larger items on your behalf?

Office space comes at a premium, so it might be worth considering relocating items you buy in bulk with your office supplies provider. This not only frees up your office space, but it’s also more cost-efficient as storage space is far cheaper than office space.

9. Waste Management

A likely overlooked aspect of running an office is what to do about waste. Managing your waste ethically and safely is essential for your business. Correct waste removal not only ensures that data is securely disposed of, but also helps towards your environmental policy.

Quills provide the following:

• Commercial Waste Management and Recycling
• Confidential Shredding and Secure Data Destruction
• Medical and Clinical Waste Management
• Offensive Hygiene Waste Removal
• Hazardous Waste Removal
• Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

10. Can your office supplies provider provide archiving services?

Whilst being environmentally friendly is an important goal for businesses to work towards and technology is largely available to help minimise paper wastage, paper in the workplace is by no means obsolete. As a business, you probably have more important things to prioritise than your documentation – especially when it’s relating to organising storage in the office.

The importance of archiving and documentation is not just short term, however; you can save money in the long term (legal fees and fines, for example) by keeping your documents safely accessible in the event that you need to use them as evidence in audits etc.

Quills offer a comprehensive range of archiving solutions:

• Workflow, EDRM, digitisation and scan back
• Storage of files and boxes
• Storing of wills, deeds and original documents
• Storage of digital media
• Consultancy including best practices, Record Management policies and retention policies
• Special projects including inventory, purging, back scanning, filing audits, filing relocations and rationalisation
• Nationwide coverage offering same day/next working day delivery

11. Order office supplies in bulk

Hopefully, this post offered insight into some of the key ways that you can minimise your office’s running costs.

Quills Group is a dedicated office management solutions provider that spans seven product and service sectors – all under one supplier. We offer a variety of services from office furniture to waste management, with a strong focus on ethical and transparent business practices.

Our free, no-obligation audit is there to help identify areas where improvements can be made in your purchasing practises across any of the sectors mentioned above and more:

• Multiple suppliers and invoices: We supply services and products from seven different sectors; with Quills, it will be one invoice and one delivery
• Own branded supplies: We can provide a quotation on a like for like basis, where we will incorporate some non-branded goods so that you can decide what is right for your business
• Print management: If you are interested in managing your printing more efficiently, Quills offer a free audit of your current expenditure. Furthermore, in this audit we will highlight where cost savings are available
• Storing larger products on your behalf: Quills offer this service; we provide regular stock level reports on these items stocked on your behalf. This ensures you never run out of those important items and frees up valuable space in your office.

If you’d like a free audit to see where your office could make significant savings, feel free to contact us:

Call: 0845 078 0324   Email: sales@quillsuk.co.uk   Live chat: www.quillsuk.co.uk

The post Is it time to review your ‘office supplies’ provider? 10 Things to help save on your office running costs appeared first on Quills UK.

Before arriving at Quills Aaron’s objective for his placement was to understand how a business operates and in particular the financial side of the company, including the systems used on a day to day basis.

So far Aaron has had a full rundown on the company from Andy Efstathiou, Managing Director, managed product updates, edited web copy, published a web article, delivered and built some chairs and spent the day with one of the Quills drivers George.

Aaron said, “I have found this experience very enjoyable and I love how friendly and understanding all of the staff have been since I arrived on Monday.  I’ve enjoyed understanding the full process of an order being received right through to the point of delivery. I was really keen to see how all of the financial data was logged onto the Quills back-office system and I feel I have a good understanding of this now. The not so good part for me was being out on the road assisting with deliveries when it was unusually hot for the UK and reached over 30 degrees!

The post New Line Learning Academy student joins Quills Group for work experience appeared first on Quills UK.

Catherine ran for her brother David who is now 8 years post-transplant and Liam McHugh who is an avid fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust ran for his daughter Rachel.

Picture: Catherine Kingston and Liam McHugh.

For more info. on the Cystic Fibrosis Trust visit https://www.cysticfibrosis.org.uk/

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Last summer Quills Group were delighted to have donated £1,000 to charity partner BIRT (Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust) which is part of The Disabilities Trust national charity.  A year on we are thrilled to advise that a further £1,000 has been raised since last Summer which takes the total toner recycling donations to nearly £2,000 since April 2013.

BIRT confirmed that previous donations were used to improve the ‘gardening club’ facilities and a number of raised beds were installed last year.  Facility users have enjoyed many hours plating seeds to grow fruit and vegetables and the below images show the results of their hard work.

Thank you to all of our customers who currently use our toner recycling service (copier, franking or fax toner cartridges) and please do keep up the good work!

For any customers who don’t currently use this service please click here for further details or call 0845 078 0324.

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