How can NCR books work for you?

NCR (No Carbon Required) books are one of the more interesting things we produce for our customers. We see them used still today where people use them to create recipes, invoices, work logs, and all manor of other handy tasks. The question is why would you use it in the age of paperless offices, online/computer based businesses systems, and tablet/smart-phone technology?

The key reason why people still use NCR books is that it is a physical record. Now in an ideal world we would have everything online, always available and our technology would always work, but this isn’t an ideal world. You might be in a event (like a trade show) or location where internet access isn’t available or very limited. You could be working in an environment that is hostile or it’s just not practical to use computer technology like the outdoors or in a workshop. There is always the practical situation where you need someone to sign a contract and need to have multiple copies of the paperwork ready in a single step. NCR books solve all of those problems and more.

What is NCR paper? NCR (No Carbon Required) paper is chemically treated that when one side is marked by the pressure of a pen or pencil, it transfers that impression to the next NCR layer with a visible mark showing. The transfer can go through many layers of NCR paper each reproducing the marks of the top most layer. In theory there is no limit to how many sheets can be put together, as long as you pressed hard enough, but practically it’s rare to see a more than 4 layers in one set of NCR pages. It’s also traditional for each layer to be different colour of paper to make it easy to see where each copy has to go.

Now you would be wondering where would you use NCR books. You can use a in any situation where you need to make a record of something, especially if you have to give a copy of it to a customer right away. Receipt and invoice books are traditional use for NCR, but you can use them for so much more than that. Let me give you a few examples of how they are used by various businesses.

• For a company specialising in servicing and repairs of construction equipment, they have their job checklists as NCR pages so they can see at a glance what has been done and what still needs to be done. It also give them a multipart identical record so the client and themselves have a running history of ever bit of work done on each machine. Because they work in an industrial (dirty) environment, computer based systems would never last, but paper and pen never breaks down and it doesn’t matter if it gets oil on it.
• Needing a form that would serve as an estimate and invoice for a property maintenance company, they went one step further by including a mapping grid so they could draw out the property and show exactly what work was to be done. This gives them the extra security as having detailed record of what is to be done and the client know what will be done before the work starts so there is no last minute changes that could cost the property management company money.
• A panel beater uses NCR books to record details on the car, draw out where on the work was done on a ‘map’ of the car, and log the details of each stage of the job so the client know exactly what has been done. This is level of detail is especially important when the work is been done under an insurance claims as those companies expect every cent spent to be justified.
• A boutique craft company attends a lot of trade shows and category events (like wedding shows) where they can’t guarantee that would be have power let alone reliable internet access. Having their order books on NCR paper means that they can record orders, give customers receipts and have full invoices with their terms and conditions in a set of copies that they only fill out once and the customer signs to confirm the order.

That’s just four examples of what NCR books have been used for. It can fill a variety of roles and and serve as a back up to the main systems if they become unavailable. If you want to find out more on how NCR books can help you and your business, why not give Copy Express a call today.