Printer consumables management?

[LRSFC_DanJ]

For those of you who hold stock of inks, toners etcetera for your organisation's printers... what do you use to manage your consumables?

 

We're currently using an ancient Access database but it is really showing its age now and we'd like to move on to something more modern.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Dan Jackson (Lead ITServices Technician)

Long Road Sixth Form College

Cambridge, UK.

[enjay]

We have a spreadsheet listing all our printers, the consumables they take and when they were changed.

All consumables are kept in our office, on a specific bit of shelf which is labelled to say which printer it is for. When we notice these stacks getting low, we order more.

 

We are about to move to a managed printing system which will order its own replacements though, so this will be a thing of the past soon.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

We are about to move to a managed printing system which will order its own replacements though, so this will be a thing of the past soon.

 

Which managed printing system are you moving to, if you don't mind me asking?

[Boredguy]

We arrange our toners on a shelf in numerical order and once we get down to a single unit for each type we order more.

[enjay]

Still to be decided. The main management will be done by PaperCut, but we are still short-listing suppliers for the actual hardware so I can't at this point comment on what system will be doing the re-ordering.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

Still to be decided. The main management will be done by PaperCut, but we are still short-listing suppliers for the actual hardware so I can't at this point comment on what system will be doing the re-ordering.

 

We have PaperCut for print credits/quotas/recharging/copy control etcetera but it doesn't do consumables management, only low toner notifications.

[fiza]

We use Printmaster. Its written by @webman

been using it for a long time now and it works really well but doesnt do re-ordering. It allows us to keep an eye on stock levels though.

 

PrintMaster - Craig A Rodway

[enjay]

It allows us to keep an eye on stock levels though.]

So does looking at the shelf. A bit old school, perhaps, but effective...

[fiza]

So does looking at the shelf. A bit old school, perhaps, but effective...

 

Printmaster allows you to run reports to see when toners were issued and also as you can have costs built-in lets you report on how much each department is spending on toner.

Can't do that easily by looking at a shelf

 

There is a demo here : http://printmaster.webman.me.uk/

Edited April 28, 2016 by fiza

[enjay]

Printmaster allows you to run reports to see when toners were issued and also as you can have costs built-in lets you report on how much each department is spending on toner.

Can't do that easily by looking at a shelf

 

Indeed, but you didn't mention those features! :-)

 

That would actually have been really useful up until now, as we give each department the first £x of toner each year from a central budget then charge them from departmental budget after that.

[Big_Ted]

have a look for fleet management tools, plenty available. I would talk to your printer supplier i expect they can recommend one.