Printer Consumable Control

[jgoodman]

First of all, Hi! I have just signed up to this forum, and so far i have found a lot of useful tips!

 

I have been given the task of setting up a printer consumable stock system, and i just wondered what other people do? I was thinking of using Access, but i am not particularly good with it so it will definatly be a steep learning curve for me!

 

Any ideas/suggestions will definatly be appreciated. I notice a lot of people us GLPI, but unfortunately this will be no good for me as i would rather have a stand-alone system/DB.

 

Many Thanks,

Jake

[Disease]

I am currently designing my Printer Consumable Stock control system using Mysql and PHP. Its mostly done, just need to sort out the low level warnings.

[jgoodman]

I am currently designing my Printer Consumable Stock control system using Mysql and PHP. Its mostly done, just need to sort out the low level warnings.

 

now thats an idea! Probably take far too much time though, and i am VERY busy atm. I will look into it though, thanks!

 

Jake

[powdarrmonkey]

I have a row of shelves with labels on, and when there's a hole I know it's out of stock

[jgoodman]

I have a row of shelves with labels on, and when there's a hole I know it's out of stock

 

That is currently what we have! Doesn't work unfortunatly, as we have a silly number of printers (around 90) so it just doesn't work!

[featured_spectre]

Daft as it sounds, I set up a WAMP server on the admin server, and set up a site with E107, and E107shop. Whenever someone takes a toner, they go on the "shop" and select the toner they used. I have it to keep me in check with how many we have left. It works quite well and the staff use it also so it makes my life easier without having to check everything.

 

Also if the stock runs down to 1, it emails me and I place the order to get new stock in. Its quite simple.

 

If you PM me, I can give you details on how to set it all up.

Edited March 23, 2009 by featured_spectre

[Jamo]

I have just created an access data base which keeps control of stock of cartridges and management of printers throughout the school. It can give you a graph of usage of cartridges through price and / or cartridge units. Will also give reports with remaining carts, ones required in school etc Its still a work in progress but its coming along nicely at the moment if people are interested I can post the work in prog up here.

[Geoff]

We use GLPI for lots of things, including stock control.

 

GLPI - Gestionnaire libre de parc informatique

[contink]

Have you considered using a simple ecommerce system with inventory control and set it up as follows:

 

- Add all your cartridges, toners, etc... as items

- Add the current stock levels for each and set a "low stock" level to warn you when it's time to order

- Add a login for each department (or at least an identity) and hand it out.

- Each time a new toner/cartridge is required they order it (or you do for them) and this updates your stock inventory.

 

 

Of course the down side of this if your inventory can be accessed without you knowing about it, it won't stay current, or you end up putting lots of data and it gets abandoned too quickly.

 

That said I could see an upside with the ability to show which departments are using the most toner, etc... and eventually you could have a system where the departments are charged "on account" for their printing consumables and this would be a good way to bring it in.

[plexer]

I think the shop idea is genius makes it easy to charge depts via invoice as well if needed I guess

 

Ben

[Ric_]

+1 for GLPI here.

[john]

Must admit I like the E-commerce shop idea myself as well, should have a look into that for recharging inks, toners, DVDs, CDs etc. Could maybe extend it to cover Reprographics for specialist media etc to try and combine some of the work we duplicate on.

[Dom_]

I just installed spiceworks and after about 10 minutes of fiddling its configured to email me whenever a print cartridge is <30%.

 

It's free and has a help desk built in too