A print manager that does accurate per page costing

[eean]

We have a great tool from OKI that downloads logs from the printer which then calculates the cost of each print based on how many cycles of the drum it has used (e.g a page that uses CYM&K would cost more to print than just, say C&K) and an estimate on the % coverage of each toner.

However, it only works for our OKI printer so people are already figuring they can escape my wrath by printing to the Konica!

 

I would really like to use something like PaperCut and I know you can set different charges for colour and mono but that's a bit blunt instrument for me. OK, I probably don't need the 4 decimal places accuracy that OKI gives, but something that at least looks at % coverage would be good.

 

I'm in a primary and would like to charge different budgets for their printing. It doesn't seem fair to charge people who let their kids put a splash of colour in a title the same as those who print out full A4 colour photos. Likewise, I'm trying to educate the reception teachers that, if it MUST be in colour, why can't you click the 'scale to 25%' button on little jonny's picture. But the only way they'll learn is if they get to Christmas and find they've got no money for glitter because they've wasted it all on toner!

 

Any ideas? Thanks.

[plexer]

I don't think you'll find any other fits all solution will give that granularity obvisoulsly the oki software can because it was written for those printers. Nothing else I've seen knows the coverage of a page for the different colours.

 

So unless you replace all your non oki's with oki's I think you won't find exactly what you need.

 

Ben