A Staples Business account gives colleges, universities, community colleges, and K-12 systems something a standard retail account cannot: an institutional purchasing environment built around contracted products, authorized users, purchasing controls, fulfillment, and organizational spend.
For E&I Cooperative Services members, that relationship goes further. Academic institutions can purchase through the competitively solicited Staples contract CR001309, which covers the company’s full product offering and includes financial incentives and rebates, eProcurement capabilities, account controls, and other services designed for organizational buyers.
A Staples Business account is an organizational purchasing account designed for institutions and businesses rather than consumers. It can support multiple authorized users, budget controls, business purchasing workflows, and access to products and services intended for larger organizations.
You may hear it called a Staples corporate account, a Staples Advantage account, or a Staples commercial account. Realistically, they all mean the same thing. These terms can overlap in search results or older account references, but the most important consideration for procurement teams is the underlying contract and purchasing structure connected to the institution.
For E&I members, that means making sure purchases are associated with the E&I Staples cooperative agreement rather than simply creating a standard retail account and assuming cooperative contract pricing and benefits will apply.
Staples Advantage is now called simply Staples Business, although you may still encounter some of the branding or even use the staplesadvantage.com account login when accessing business products or researching account services.
Account setup should begin by making sure your Staples B2B account aligns with your institution’s procurement structure.
An E&I member first needs to establish access to the appropriate Staples contract and determine how the account should align with existing procurement policies. From there, procurement teams can identify account administrators, authorized purchasers, billing arrangements, and any eProcurement integration requirements.
A typical implementation might involve:
A large university may need a very different configuration than a small community college. Procurement teams should consider whether purchasing is centralized or decentralized, how departments and campuses are organized, which cost centers need to be reflected in the account, and who requires administrative privileges.
For example, a Staples corporate account structure for a multi-campus institution may need to accommodate numerous departmental buyers while giving central procurement visibility into overall activity. A smaller college might have only a few authorized users working through a central business office. Planning this structure before implementation can make reporting, user administration, and purchasing oversight easier later.
Higher education purchasing frequently extends far beyond the procurement office. Facilities, IT, athletics, academic departments, student services, libraries, administrative offices, and other campus functions may all need routine purchasing access.
A Staples Business account supports unlimited account users and includes customizable budget controls for users and departments, giving institutions flexibility to accommodate decentralized buyers within an organized purchasing environment.
However, flexibility should still be governed by institutional policy. Account access should reflect each employee’s purchasing authority rather than giving every user unrestricted buying privileges.
When buyers have their own access, institutions have a clearer record of who initiated purchases. It also becomes easier to modify or remove access when an employee changes departments or leaves the institution.
Procurement teams should periodically review users rather than allowing access lists to grow indefinitely. Staff turnover, reorganizations, and changes in purchasing responsibilities can all create outdated permissions and cause problems if not managed. This is particularly important for a Staples Advantage account used across a large institution, where dozens or even hundreds of employees may interact with the purchasing environment.
Account controls help support institutional budget and purchasing policies. A business account at Staples is designed with budget-control capabilities to help your procurement team structure decentralized purchasing while maintaining oversight. These controls can complement departmental budgets, delegated authority, approval thresholds, and other internal procedures.
For institutions with established procurement technology, Staples B2B purchasing can also be incorporated into existing workflows. For example, the E&I Staples contract is punchout capable and supports integration with more than 150 different eProcurement systems.
In a typical punchout process, an authorized user enters the Staples catalog through the institution’s procurement platform, shops for contracted products, and returns the completed cart to the institutional system. The requisition can then follow normal approval, purchase order, and accounting processes. This approach can reduce duplicate data entry and keep purchasing activity within the institution’s established procurement environment, reducing off-contract spend and taking advantage of negotiated rates.
An employee searching for a Staples.com or StaplesAdvantage.com account may not need to shop through a separate direct-login process at all. Depending on the institution’s configuration, access may begin inside its own eProcurement platform.
The E&I agreement includes more than one million products, making the contract relevant to a much broader range of campus needs than traditional office supplies. Here are just a few of the categories that campuses can purchase through Staples.
Category | PRODUCTS |
Office Supplies | Paper, writing products, filing, organization, and administrative essentials |
Technology | Devices, peripherals, accessories, cables, and supporting equipment |
Furniture | Classrooms, offices, libraries, meeting areas, and student spaces |
Jan-San | Cleaning products and facilities support supplies |
Breakroom | Beverages, shared-space supplies, and kitchen essentials |
Promotional Products | Branded merchandise, apparel, giveaways, and campus events |
Custom Print | Forms, signage, communications, and other printed materials |
For institutions using a Staples commercial account, this creates opportunities to consolidate appropriate spend rather than maintaining separate supplier relationships for every routine category. That can reduce the challenges in managing multiple suppliers and also consolidate purchasing to achieve greater volume discounts.
Procurement teams still need to evaluate product fit, service requirements, and institutional goals. But having broad category coverage under an established contract can reduce unnecessary fragmentation.
Furniture illustrates how far the Staples relationship extends beyond basic office products.
Academic institutions routinely furnish classrooms, faculty offices, administrative areas, libraries, student lounges, meeting spaces, and collaborative learning environments. Staples’ furniture and interiors capabilities allow these needs to be addressed within the broader contract relationship.
That can be particularly useful during renovations, moves, or space refreshes. A department might need furniture along with technology accessories, office supplies, breakroom items, print materials, and other supporting products.
Instead of treating every category as a completely separate procurement project, institutions can use the broader Staples B2B relationship where it makes sense to coordinate purchases.
Payment structure is another consideration when implementing an institutional account. Depending on the specific account arrangement, organizations may use invoice-based billing, purchase orders, institutional p-cards, or other approved payment methods. Terms such as Net 30 may also be available based on the account configuration and credit arrangement.
The financial value of a cooperative agreement extends beyond discounts on individual products. The E&I Staples contract includes contracted pricing, financial incentives, and rebates. Institutions may also create value by reducing sourcing workload, consolidating appropriate spend, improving contract utilization, and reducing the administrative effort associated with fragmented supplier relationships.
E&I calculates a Total Economic Benefit of 13.2% to 15.8% for the Staples contract. The measure combines cost reduction, cost avoidance, and incentives and revenue, accounting for both volume discounts and the efficiency of using a cooperative agreement. That’s important as the unit price is just one component of procurement value. Staff time, sourcing costs, contract administration, incentives, and operational efficiency also have economic consequences.
A structured business account with Staples can also help institutions route routine buying through an approved purchasing channel.
When departments independently purchase similar products from many sources, procurement may have difficulty seeing total category spend. Fragmentation can also make it harder to leverage contracts, standardize frequently purchased products, and understand where institutional dollars are going. Providing an easy-to-use contracted purchasing channel can reduce the incentive for employees to buy outside established processes.
Staples operates a delivery network supported by 32 national fulfillment centers and offers next-day delivery across 98% of the United States. That infrastructure can be important for institutions with multiple campuses, geographically distributed locations, or departments that need frequent replenishment of routine supplies.
Exact delivery timing will depend on product availability, destination, and other order factors, so institutions should evaluate service requirements for specific categories rather than assuming every purchase will arrive the next day.
Procurement teams are increasingly asked to consider environmental factors alongside cost, service, and compliance. Through the E&I contract, Staples offers approximately 20,000 environmentally preferable products with supporting reporting. Staples also uses smart-size packaging intended to improve box utilization and reduce packaging materials.
Its fulfillment approach includes logistics optimization and an efficient, sustainable delivery fleet. These capabilities allow institutions to incorporate sustainability into everyday purchasing decisions rather than treating environmental goals as a separate procurement activity.
Staples also provides electronics recycling options, which can help academic institutions address end-of-life technology as part of broader lifecycle and sustainability planning.
E&I Staples contract CR001309 was competitively solicited and is available to higher education and K-12 institutions. The current agreement runs from February 3, 2025, through February 2, 2030, with one five-year renewal remaining.
Eligible institutions may be able to use the cooperative agreement instead of conducting a separate solicitation, reducing the sourcing workload while accessing established contract terms.
As the only nonprofit, member-owned sourcing cooperative that focuses exclusively on the education sector, E&I Cooperative Services offers more than 260 cooperative agreements for nearly every category of products and services academic institutions need. E&I competitively solicits contracts on behalf of its 6,500+ educational institution members, aggregating demand to achieve significant volume discounts and terms that meet public procurement standards. Because of this intense focus on education, E&I negotiates contracts that align with the unique needs of school districts and higher education.
Can colleges and universities open a Staples Business account?
Yes. Academic institutions can establish organizational accounts with Staples. E&I members can access Staples through the cooperative contract, tapping into volume discounts, exclusive financial incentives, and rebates.
What is the difference between a retail account and a Staples commercial account?
A retail account is designed primarily for individual purchasing, while an institutional account can support organizational users, purchasing controls, contracted terms, and other business capabilities.
Can multiple departments use the same Staples account?
Yes. Staples Business supports unlimited users, allowing institutions to provide purchasing access across departments while maintaining centralized account administration and budget controls.
Does Staples integrate with institutional eProcurement systems?
Yes. The E&I contract is punchout capable, and Staples reports integration with more than 150 eProcurement systems.
How can institutions save through the E&I Staples contract?
Value can come from contracted pricing, incentives, rebates, reduced sourcing workload, supplier consolidation, improved contract utilization, and other forms of cost avoidance.
Staples Advantage is an older name for the Staples Business account program. Despite the name change, the underlying program remains the same, providing customized purchasing, corporate pricing, and supply management for companies and institutions.
Explore the E&I Staples cooperative contract or connect with your E&I representative to establish your account and start saving today.