If you're deciding whether Staples Business Advantage is worth setting up for your company, my answer is this: for companies with 30+ employees and multiple delivery locations, yes. For a 10-person shop ordering supplies twice a quarter, no — the setup and admin overhead won't pay for itself.
I manage procurement for a 120-person company across three offices. I've been in this role for six years. Annual office supply spend sits around $47,000 across roughly eight vendors, and Staples Advantage currently handles about 60% of that volume.
The reason isn't pricing — we still comparison-shop. The reason is that Staples Advantage consolidates purchase orders, approvals, invoicing, and delivery tracking into one workflow. That's where the actual time savings happen.
Why You Should Trust This Review
I took over purchasing in 2019. My first year was messy — I was managing orders across five vendors with no centralized system. When we opened our second office in 2021, I had to figure out a consolidated approach fast. We brought on Staples Business Advantage that same year and have been using it since.
I don't work for Staples. I'm not paid by them. I'm just someone who's spent hundreds of hours in their procurement portal and has opinions about what's genuinely useful versus what's just marketing.
What Staples Advantage Actually Does Well
Three things stand out:
One: account structure for multi-location ordering. Each of our three offices has its own cost center, its own approvers, and its own budget caps. Setting this up took maybe two hours with our rep, and it's saved me from chasing down who ordered what from where every month.
Two: bulk consumables. Paper, toner, file folders, packing tape — the stuff that evaporates without anyone signing it out. I set up standing orders with department-level caps. That alone cut about 4 hours of monthly admin work. Not glamorous, but that's where the real efficiency lives.
Three: label stock. We go through a lot of shipping and mailing labels. The ones I order most often are the Staples Advantage labels 5160/8160 (Avery-compatible templates). The 5160 is for our laser printers at HQ; the 8160 works with the inkjet units at our satellite offices. Same dimensions, different printer specs. If you've ever printed 30 sheets of labels only to watch half of them peel off in the mail sorter, you know why I'm specific about this.
One early mistake I made: I assumed "standard label size" meant the same thing across vendors. It doesn't. We had 2,000 loyalty cards printed on what a third-party vendor called "standard" — they were about 3mm off from what our badge holders needed. Nobody noticed until the holders arrived. Not a huge loss, but embarrassing.
If you need to contact them directly, the Staples Business Advantage phone number is available on their site — it routes based on your account type, so log in first.
On Fountain Pens and the 'Small Stuff'
Not everything is about bulk pricing. Every once in a while, someone asks for something specific — a nicer pen for client meetings, a branded notebook, a desk accessory that doesn't look like it came from a dollar store.
Last month, an account manager asked me: "What is a fountain pen, and can we order a box for the client dinner?"
Short version: a fountain pen uses a refillable ink reservoir rather than a disposable cartridge or a ballpoint mechanism. They write noticeably smoother and feel more substantial in hand. For client-facing events or executive gifts, they're a solid choice. But they require maintenance, can leak, and aren't practical for daily office use where things disappear and get lost.
My rule: fountain pens for occasions and gifts. Ballpoints and gel pens for everything else. Anyone who's cleaned ink out of a conference room carpet will agree.
The Financial Tools I Actually Use (Not Office-Related, But Useful)
This might seem like a tangent, but managing a department budget means thinking about money a lot more than I expected. Two tools I keep bookmarked:
The Fire calculator. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The calculator estimates how much you need saved to stop working full-time. I use it for long-term planning — it helps contextualize department spend decisions. When someone asks for a $14,000 furniture upgrade, knowing the broader budget picture (and honestly, my own retirement math) makes those calls easier.
The Dave Ramsey mortgage calculator. I don't agree with everything Ramsey says, but his mortgage calculator is clean, simple, and grounded in practical repayment math. I've used it when evaluating lease-to-own equipment financing and when helping new hires understand relocation packages. It's free, doesn't require an account, and gives you a straight answer without an upsell.
Both are relevant in a roundabout way: if you manage procurement, you probably manage budgets. Having basic tools to sanity-check financial decisions is part of the job, even if it's not in the title.
Where Staples Advantage Doesn't Make Sense
I want to be honest about the limitations here.
If your company is under 20 people, the setup isn't worth it. Staples Advantage is built for volume and multi-location coordination. A single small office with a retail account and a rewards card will get the same practical benefit without the learning curve.
If your supply needs are highly specialized — custom manufacturing parts, industry-specific materials — Staples Advantage likely won't cover enough of your spend to justify consolidating. We still use three other vendors for specialized items, and that's fine.
And the savings? Real, but not dramatic. We average 3-8% below retail on most categories, plus the admin time savings on the back end. If you're not ordering enough for those percentages to add up, you won't feel the benefit.
But if you're in that mid-size range — high enough volume to matter, not high enough to have a dedicated procurement team — it's worth exploring. Set up a trial account, run one quarter of orders through it, and compare against your current process. That'll tell you more than any review will.
Leave a Reply