>>>>>This is from experience - the few times I was glossing over such reports, that's what everybody was doing - we looked for the cases where the estimate was way off the mark. So I'd make them easy to spot.
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>>>>First, thank you for your suggestions. Your input made me think of the following. Since this report (comparison of estimated with actual) will be targeting a pretty wide audience, it is difficult for me to "express" in the text column the "warning signs". But what I am thinking is to show the Percentage green color where the actual was less or equal than estimate. And to show the Percentage in red color where the actual was greater than estimate. So the color will call attention. And then the user will decide what is "too much" or "too little".
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>>>I was also thinking of color, but really didn't know what kind of printer you have. Perhaps, then, bold the extreme values.
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>>I never thought that the customer may not have a color printer. Bold values where actual exceeded the estimate sounds like a "safe" approach. Thank you.
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>I have a color printer (Canon) and I'm not using it :). It cost it's own price in ink every nine months or so, and I haven't printed more than 1000 sheets with five packs of ink. The ink simply "expires", i.e. it doesn't really measure the amount of ink or number of pages printed or anything - it relies on the bloody calendar to make sure I have bought enough ink every year. So I bought a laser (Samsung) for the pretty much same price - the initial toner, allegedly worth only 200 pages, is still printing solid black. And at least the black dust gets baked into the paper and lasts as long as the paper does, while ink does fade or gradually works its way through the fiber in the paper and the edges become slightly blurry. Doesn't fade much, though.
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>I've seen offices where they had about equal amount of laser and ink printers, and for anything that was printed in more than two copies, they'd go for laser.

Ink - color or B&W - is the most profitable (or at least used to be) side of printer manufacturers and office supply stores (e.g. Staples, OfficeMax). But I think more people these days either buy laser printers (like you do) or never print but rather save reports as PDF and look at them when necessary. In my business I went paperless some time ago and save everything on my drive as PDF.