Copier and Printing Management

[budgester]

We have 6 Panasonic copiers connected for printing, a print room, and a stackload of other printers around the building.

 

A load of our printers are managed with CUPS on Ubuntu.

 

The bursar wants to be able to bill by department for printing costs for the print room and the copiers.

 

I'm looking at Pcounter and linking it in with our Mifare RFID cards, I want simple management.

 

Any one got any good ideas on the best way to do this ?

[SteveBentley]

We have some kit from ICS which links PCounter to mifare, a bit flaky to be honest - I managed to kill the whole lot when importing a .csv with all the mifare numbers into PCounter. Twice.

[Michael]

Most photocopiers allow you to setup user codes and quota limits. This then allows you to monitor individual printer/copier use. I do this with Canon machines which I manage through a web browser.

[budgester]

We currently have codes loaded into each copier, but between keeping 6 of them updated they have managed to get out of sync, and when I tried to sort out the pins on the copiers it managed to lose all the print history......that made for a happy bursar I can tell you.

 

So I'm really looking for something that would do pull printing with RFID and departments.

 

We also have the issue of staff who copy/print for different budget areas, so some way of selecting which group the printing gets allocated to is needed as well.

 

Annnnd I woudl like it to be really easy to manage so I can palm it off on the finance office.

[Michael]

I agree that keeping the copiers in sync can be difficult, but that's when agreed dates of credit renewal should be discussed beforehand. Each user should also have the same code for each machine, which keeps things simple. You can also set different quota limits per user.

 

As for the photocopier losing the data, I suppose that's possible - but then again someone usually should keep a record every month of quotas.

[john]

I use Toshiba copiers for these jobs and the same CSV file works for all of them so its one file and voilla sorted, if I need new pins or to reset one I either do them manaully (1 min job on each machine so not that big) or do it via the webpage myself so 2 mins does them all. I always put in 10 "Spare" Pin Numbers for occasions when I need extras etc and make a record that Spare 1 is then person X etc.

 

 

Emos Information Systems - Home may also be worth a look into, it may be of some use to you.

[kxv2020]

In our days... we always use to use other teachers PIN codes!!!

[mac_shinobi]

Software for print quota and print control management. Your print accounting and monitoring solution - PaperCut

[stl_support]

like the post above

i would suggest Papercut MF

having played around with print/copy monitoring software for the last 7 years its the one i am happy with (finally)

PaperCut MF - PaperCut, Copier Control, Copier Accounting, MFD, Access Control, Quota, Vending, Audit, Photocopier for more info.

 

If the copiers are up for renewal soon that may open the door for some embedded options.