Block colour copying in Equitrac

[Alis_Klar]

Hi,

We have Equitrac. It was here when I took the job 2 yrs ago. It works very well IF it's properly setup. Recently we wanted to ban all colour printing and copying. This is where all the trouble started.

The Equitrac support for Ricoh is done by another unit in london and they don't really seem to know what they are doing. This is not a good combination with Equitrac which is not the kind of software you can guess with (read impossible to understand!)

We have a working rule in place to ban colour printing but cannot for the life of me get copying restricted to colour. Have tried everything and Ricoh support are useless!

Have also tried charging £5000 per sheet for colour but it still comes out and does not deduct from their balance. Mono prints are still deducted as usual. We have Ricoh MFD with PCC installed on them so users can pick up print jobs by entering their pin.

[gds64]

Colour copying can be blocked, but how it's done is quite dependant on the version of PCC, the model of Ricoh MFP (and it's settings) along with the version of Equitrac. The fact that the cost of the job is not being deducted from the user is possibly due to costs being applied to either a department, or a billing code. If you let me have a little more information, I may be able to help

Cheers

[Alis_Klar]

Equitrac Express Version 4.1.0.3238
PCC version 3.1.13 D027/D029 (on MFP C5000) and 3.1.13 D023/D025 (on MFP C3300) (set to Print and Copy Control)
MFP's Aficio C3300 & C5000 Colour

In rules & routing we have a rule set up to Force monochrome printing. In the wizard when you choose "Apply this rule to copying" there is no action or criteria that mentions colour or force mono.

Ricoh support hinted that is may be possible in the machines settings but as we were using PCC and Equitrac that is was not possible.

We may have incorrectly configured price lists as not sure if all device levels (Port, Print Queue, Embedded Device) need to have price list associated.

[gds64]

I think that even tough these are all early versions, copy stop should still work. Enable colour quotas (System Manager > Configuration > Colour Quota) and set it to disable copying once the quota is exceeded. Then restart the Equitrac DCE service. Set a user account with a zero colour quota and test it.

[Alis_Klar]

I have had "disable copying on color devices once quota exceeded" checked for a few days and it does not seem to make any difference but neglected to restart the DCE service. Did that but no dice!

I have noticed that users have negative values next to "remaining pages" in color quota section of user properties

[gds64]

Do you have user limits enabled?

[gds64]

I've just tested this on 4.1.1.xxxx with PCC 3.1.25 on an MPC2800, and whilst it allows you to finish a colour copy job and exceed your colour quota (hence your negative balance?) - it does prevent you from doing any more colour copies within the same session. If you logout and log back in, you are prevented from accessing any colour copy settings, so with a zero colour quota set for the users, it should do what you need.

[Alis_Klar]

Do you have user limits enabled?

The department the users are in does not have either "Do not enforce account limits for users in this department" or "Do not enforce color quotas for users in the department" checked.

Also the color quota section on users has 0 as color quota.

Additionally in Configuration>Account Limits both "by user" and "by department" are checked (have also tried with just "by user" checked)
in Configuration>Account Charging "Charge to department if available" is not checked.

Is this what you mean?

[Alis_Klar]

I've just tested this on 4.1.1.xxxx with PCC 3.1.25 on an MPC2800, and whilst it allows you to finish a colour copy job and exceed your colour quota (hence your negative balance?) - it does prevent you from doing any more colour copies within the same session. If you logout and log back in, you are prevented from accessing any colour copy settings, so with a zero colour quota set for the users, it should do what you need.

Thanks for your help.