A definition of office stationery

Office activities such as purchases, sales, salary payments, etc., may be recorded in physical and/or electronic form. Although there are receipts, invoices and other electronic documents, paper is still widely used in offices, especially in small and medium-sized companies. The sheets of paper are also used to record internal communication within the premises of an office, as well as to communicate the terms and conditions to outsiders or request any material. Therefore, most office supplies are used in some way in relation to paper.

The list of such office supplies includes pens, graphite pencils, highlighters, markers, erasers, crayons, ballpoint pens, sharpeners, knives, paper and tape cutters, adhesive tapes, scissors, paper clips or clamps, chart pins, paper, files, folders, trays to store incoming and outgoing documents, staples and staplers, printer ink, printer ribbon, toner, glue, sticky notes, note holders, etc. The list of office supplies mentioned above is certainly not exhaustive.

An essential characteristic of any office stationery is that it is consumed in a short time and cannot be reused. Therefore, a piece of chalk or marker that is used in the conference room to explain and discuss certain strategies would also be office supplies, even if it is not used on any paper. However, the blackboard on which something is written with a pen can be used for several years. Therefore, the whiteboard cannot be classified as stationery.

This differentiation is, of course, for accounting purposes. There are accounting standards and guidelines for such a classification of objects and consumables used in any office premises. It can be argued that refills can be used in ballpoint pens. Again, the rules would allow the classification of pens as office stationery primarily due to cost. Consumables used in offices are different from those used in factory premises. While the consumables in the manufacturing unit are mixed or integrated into the product that the company sells, this direct consumption of office stationery does not exist. But in the case of companies that offer services, office supplies are equivalent to the consumables of the manufacturing company.

Over the years, the consumption of office supplies has been reduced due to new electronic tools. But it will be some time before the electronic medium completely replaces paper documents and vouchers. Security and portability are the main reasons for using physical copies of any document such as vouchers, invoices, pay stubs, agreements, etc. While a person can carry information on a laptop or tablet, carrying a hard copy of all electronically generated information is a good practice because computers can be stolen or damaged. Another drawback is the dependence on energy to retrieve any information in electronic support. One of the reasons paper vouchers still exist is the accounting stipulation associated with them. The accountant is required to obtain the recipient’s signatures on the vouchers when payments are made in cash. This is difficult in an electronic environment.