Print a short safety sheet, and put the rest behind a code
You can usually move most of what customers look up after setup behind a QR code, but not the safety information your market requires on paper. How much you save depends on how many of your pages are safety content, so count them and run your own numbers below.
- Stays on paper
- Safety information and instructions needed for safe use, and anything your category requires.
- Can move online
- The full manual, videos, troubleshooting, extra languages, spare parts and warranty.
- Calculator
- Your numbers only. It stores nothing and has no defaults.
- Not a promise
- We quote no savings. Your printer’s quote and your legal review decide.
What can move online, and what must stay on paper?
The rule of thumb across the guides on this site is the same: a QR code adds to what the law wants with the product, and it doesn’t stand in for it. What that leaves depends on your market and product.
| Content | Where it goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Safety warnings and instructions needed for safe use (consumer products sold in the EU) | On paper, in the languages of each market | General Product Safety Regulation, Article 9(7). Recital 32 mentions QR codes only as an addition. See GPSR and QR codes. |
| Product identification and manufacturer details | On the product, or else the package or an accompanying document | GPSR, Article 9(5) and 9(6). |
| Instructions for machinery sold in the EU | May be digital from 20 January 2027, under conditions | Machinery Regulation, Article 10(7). You must also send a free paper copy within a month if a buyer asks at purchase. See the Machinery guide. |
| Essential safety information for machinery non-professionals may use | On paper | Machinery Regulation, Article 10(7). |
| Mandatory package declarations in India | On the pack, with a narrow QR route for some electronic-product declarations | A manual isn’t one of these declarations, but the label stays. See Legal Metrology and QR codes. |
| Setup steps beyond safety, the full manual, care and cleaning | Behind the code | Keep the manual downloadable, and print on request where required. |
| Troubleshooting, FAQs, videos, spare parts, warranty and support | Behind the code | These change most, and they are easier to use on a phone. |
| Languages beyond those required for each market | Behind the code | One code can open up to ten languages on ItemDocs. |
We haven’t reviewed product standards under BIS certification, which may set their own rules for instructions, so check the standard for your product. In India, the Legal Metrology rules deal with package declarations, not manuals, so don’t read them as permission to drop every paper page.
How do you find out how much you can move?
There’s no honest general percentage. Take your current manual and mark each page:
- Red: warnings and safety instructions. These stay.
- Red: anything your compliance team says must be in the box for your category and markets.
- Amber: setup steps a person can’t do safely without. Ask your compliance team, and keep them on paper until they answer.
- Green: everything else, such as care, troubleshooting, specifications, spare parts and warranty terms.
- Count the red and amber pages per language. That is your safety sheet.
- Have your compliance team sign off the split before you change anything.
What does printing cost you today?
Enter your own figures. The fields start empty because a default would be our guess at your business. Annual cost is copies × pages × languages × cost per page, where copies are units plus reprints × copies in each reprint. The safety-sheet line uses the same sum with the sheet’s page count.
Boxes that get a printed manual.
Count sides, not sheets.
From your printer’s quote, in any currency.
In the box, per unit.
Extra runs because the content changed.
Only the extra copies. Leave empty if reprints just split the year’s run.
What must stay on paper for your product.
- Copies printed per year
- –
- Annual print cost today
- –
- Annual print cost with only the safety sheet
- –
- Difference
- –
Results are in the currency of your cost per page. They are arithmetic on your own numbers, not a benchmark or a promise of savings. Both lines use the same reprints; a safety sheet that changes less often would cost less than shown.
What does the sum leave out?
The calculator counts printed pages and nothing else. Before you take its difference to a meeting, add what it can’t see:
- Your printer’s real quote. Cost per page changes with run length, so a two-page sheet may cost more per page than a forty-page booklet.
- Setup and storage. Plates, folding, inserting and warehouse space are outside this sum, and they may go up or down.
- Stock on hand. Existing booklets are already paid for. Run them out or scrap them, but count that decision.
- The online side. Someone has to write and keep the page. Translation still has to be paid for, though only for what you publish.
- A paper option. Under the Machinery Regulation you must supply paper on request, and customers without a smartphone may ask anyway. Plan a small reserve.
- Customer effects. Whether support calls go up or down is something only your own data can show. See measuring support calls.
When is this worth doing, and when isn’t it?
Worth doing if…
- your manual runs to many pages or many languages, and most of them aren’t safety content;
- you reprint because content changes, or you scrap stock when it does;
- you can test with one model before changing the rest.
Not worth doing, or not yet, if…
- your manual is already little more than safety information;
- your product or market requires the full instructions on paper;
- your buyers often have no phone or no connection where the product is used;
- you have one document that never changes. A static QR code to a PDF on your own site may be enough, and it costs nothing;
- you want the printed manual to be removed from a regulated product without a compliance review. Don’t.
Sources
Checked
Links open the original documents.
- [1]Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety: Article 9 and recital 32EUR-Lex
- [2]Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 on machinery: Article 10(7)EUR-Lex
- [3]Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Amendment Rules, 2023, G.S.R. 456(E)Gazette of India, via the Department of Consumer Affairs
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