Papercut - recharges

[Liam]

Ok, so I have recently reviewed our groups in active directory and populated them based on staff timetable commitments. Works well for email purposes.

Today i received my monthly printing reports to find that i completely overlooked the printing recharging aspect.

 

I schedule reports based on group printing and each group is made up of the members of that department. Staff just print and it is charged to their personal account. Historically this worked as we assumed each member of staff had a 'primary' subject but some staff teach 3 different subjects now.

 

So today a member of staff appeared on two reports. Now I'm pretty confident that the printing costs will be for her primary department but there is certainly an argument to be had here if I'm not careful.

 

What I'm thinking of that I present staff with a pop up listing shared accounts and they select the relevant one. This assumes that the staff are totally honest. Let's face it this isn't a bullet proof solution but I can't think of any other way.

 

How do others do this?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Liam

[FN-GM]

What I'm thinking of that I present staff with a pop up listing shared accounts and they select the relevant one. This assumes that the staff are totally honest. Let's face it this isn't a bullet proof solution but I can't think of any other way.

 

This is what we do. Its a pain in the rear though. People, myself included lock the PC to collect printing as soon as we hit the print button. Forgetting a few seconds later a confirmation box comes up asking to select a department to charge.

[Killer_Bot]

This is how we do it too. I've set up AD Groups based on Departments that are then mapped in Papercut Groups and allocated to 'Accounts'. Staff don't get the option of a personal account anymore and must select one of the accounts they have access to (which is based off of AD Security Groups) and then our monthly report is just per Account.

 

We also set up a 'Billing - All' security group that is a member of every 'Billing - %subject%' for people like ReproGraphics or Admins who will be printing for others.

 

Whilst you could do something similiar with Papercut I prefer to keep the groups AD based as they're easier to manage and maintain.

 

Works really well.

[howartp]

This is what we do. Its a pain in the rear though. People, myself included lock the PC to collect printing as soon as we hit the print button. Forgetting a few seconds later a confirmation box comes up asking to select a department to charge.

 

That's how we do it also.

 

In general I'd like to say that "you only forget to wait for the popup once" - but then I know I occasionally forget when I'm in a hurry.

 

Peter

[Liam]

ok, thats the way i thought i needed to go.

 

My only other question is. How does this display from a balance point of view? Can i display the balance of an account for the month rather than a user?

[Killer_Bot]

I don't believe you can display it via the small popup client unfortunately. I believe if they login to the interface they can see it then though.

 

See here;

 

PaperCut KB | How do I show Shared Account Balances in the User Client

[Killer_Bot]

Not sure if I've misunderstood your question now sorry. You can produce reports with monthly balances if that's what you mean? We have an automated monthly report that shows accounts and balances for our Finance team. It's pretty straight forward in the 'Reports' section.EduGeek.net - The I.T. Professionals' life line

[fiza]

We do the shared accounts too so users pick from a list. They are only shown accounts that they are members of. We don't put quotas on for shared accounts. Each Dept is billed at the end of the month and Finance take the money from their budget and stick it in IT so we can then purchase the consumables. Dept heads get to see the reports so can see exactly who has spent what and then query anything they are unsure of.

[Liam]

thats how i do it now for groups but with accounts do you select 'charge shared account' or 'Charge personal account (and allocate to shared account for reporting)' I guess this then shows them what they are spending on their client popup.

Thanks

[fiza]

thats how i do it now for groups but with accounts do you select 'charge shared account' or 'Charge personal account (and allocate to shared account for reporting)' I guess this then shows them what they are spending on their client popup.

Thanks

 

we use charge to shared account. As we don't use quotas it didnt make sense to show them a balance as it would always be a negative value. We just blank out the value in the client. If they click into the details on the client they can see how many pages they have printed but not the cost.

[Edu-IT]

Having the option to charge to personal account is useful if you sell printer credits for personal use. For example, allowing staff to print their own documents but pay out their own pocket.