Charging appropriately for print credits

[SteveB_NI]

I was wondering if anyone can give me advice on how the charging / allocation of print credits is managed within their schools...

 

Basically we have a number of teaching staff who works for several different depts - e.g. one is timetabled to 10 periods music, but the rest science etc. I've been given the ok to remove an allowance from each dept's budget to cover printing costs, but here's the issue - what do I do about the teachers who work between different depts?

 

Ideally I plan to give each HOD a set allowance, and subject teachers another allowance, then if they need topped up it must go through the HOD.

 

Unfortunately the managed service provider here only has a single figure for print credit allocation. On our internal network I am able to allocate it a bit flexibly, so they choose their department cost centre, but unfortunately not on the system the teaching staff use.

 

Thanks for any help / ideas!

[synaesthesia]

Using papercut we can have members of staff allocated to multiple departments. They (at least will do soon) have a small amount of personal credit for whatever they please, and large amounts of credit for each of the departments they work with. Currently we don't do much with them, but some departments like a printout report of who's printing what in their department and they can deal with it accordingly. With rising costs, it's quite possible things might get stricter.

 

With that system anyway it can all be set up to work how you need by default with no scripting.

[RichB]

We give them 20 credits each per week, no matter who you are. These roll over so if you do not use them you can save them! Students 10 credits no roll over.

 

Caused WW3 however cut our printing budget down by 20k in year one. We allow department heads to purchase additional credits at £20 per 400 credits.

 

Black and white is 1 credit, colour 2, duplex black and white 1.5, duplex colour 3.

 

Really made staff think about how they worked and in turn the use of our VLE has gone through the roof.