Calculating Your Office Toilet Paper Purchase Volume

You are managing an office with a fixed number of bathroom stalls. You need to keep each stall fully stocked throughout the day without missing a beat. You also need to avoid keeping more paper on hand than you have room to store. While you’re at it, you would like to factor your usage requirements into a bulk purchase that gives you the best possible value per unit of measure. Typically, surface area per package, as measured in square feet.

This may seem like a tricky calculation, but here is some good news. First, as long as you stay within your storage constraints, toilet paper will last forever. It has no expiration date so maximizing your storage volume will almost always pay off. Second, toilet paper is used on a steady basis. Even if you overbuy, you’ll never find yourself with cash locked up in an asset that does not generate returns. Among all the items on your list of business expenses, toilet paper may be the easiest to measure. It never loses its value, it does not undergo seasonal fluctuations in use or cost. Whatever you buy, you use. You can afford to factor an element of trial and error into your initial calculations. If you get it wrong on the first round, the stakes are low. Just learn from your error and adjust.

Measure Cost by Surface Area, Not Sheet Number
Experts have learned that surface area is the best way to measure toilet paper value. Sheets per roll can be inconsistent since sheet size varies widely. Weight and volume don’t work well because they fail to account for ply thickness.

Obtain a Baseline
Before you determine how much you will need (per week, month, or year depending on your available storage space), understand how much you use per week, month, or year. Most people use about 1.5 rolls of toilet paper per week. At approximately 125 square feet per roll, this translates to about 188 square feet per person each week.

You can use this as your baseline or you can simply monitor a week’s worth of use in your office. This will give you a total number of rolls used which can then be divided by square foot per roll.

Factor in Use and Storage Methods
You may use exposed rolls in your office restrooms or you may use enclosed distribution systems often found in institutional buildings. For example, you might use a locked case containing multiple large rolls at once. You could use any combination of these systems. The larger your in stall capacity, the less paper you’ll need to keep in storage and the more space you’ll have available. To get the best value, maximize that space. Your toilet paper is not going anywhere until it is used. Given time, it will be.

If you need guidance, look for online apps and tools like this one) that can help you get the most for your money.