Toners!

[IanT]

May I ask how your school deals with Toner requests from Staff and how you guys control paper and toner usage?

[laserblazer]

I rely on CPL's next day delivery, keeping a minimal stock. When we get down to the last one, I order some more. Most of the printing goes to networked photocopiers that the office manage. Each department has a code which is supposed to indicate useage but everyone knows all the codes, so I'm not sure how accurate it is!

[danIT]

We try and make sure the majority of printers are the same model.

 

We keep a stock of toners based on previous years orders.

 

We use pcounter to track each departments printer usage and they buy there own paper - So thats not our problem.

 

Each department gets billed by IT, we pay for ICT Depts toner and we use there paper.

[dgsmith]

I tend to check every communal printer on a regular (usually daily or every other day) basis (web admin interface). I know which ones aren't going to run out any time soon and which ones are, and also which ones go through cartridges the quickest.

 

For some I'll always have at least 1 cartridge in, others (such as the HP 2600n) i'll have 2 of each as we have alot of those printers. With our longer lasting ones (the HP P3005n has a 13000 yield cartridge and lasts about a year) I only tend to order 2-3 months before that time, unless I get a good deal (open box, pristine).

 

Some staff have their own printers which they are responsible for, although I am quite happy to make orders for the consumables on their behalf if they let me know in advance, or as and when needed.

 

Some people prefer to make 1 big order annually, others do it "as and when". I guess I am in between, but as I know our printers inside-out, I know exactly how many of each toner i'll need for which printers! I try to do a stockcheck every 1-2 weeks and keep that on a spreadsheet so if I ever order something, I can refer to that for anything else we may need.

 

We use papercut (could do with updating it as well!), and dept (staff) usage is charged to their department papercut account, and every half term the balance is transferred into a central "printing" budget. All consumables are paid from that.

 

Don't deal with paper, so don't have that worry!

Edited January 27, 2010 by dgsmith

[elsiegee40]

I keep 1 spare set of toners in and control usage using Print Manager Plus which was bolted down pretty hard and, as of today, has become downright nasty.

 

A 27% increase in printing with evidence that, of the printing done this academic year, one third was done by one user(!), another third by one department and the final third by everyone in the rest of the school means that there was a unanimous SMT decision on today's actions. I quite enjoyed myself setting it up. Especially as I'm on a course tomorrow and will be safely out of harm's way as brown stuff starts to fly!

 

Run away..... !

[Oops_my_bad]

Each month I print off a "hall of shame" top 10 tree burners report in papercut and put it on the staffroom notice board. Sit back and watch the fall out - usual comments along the lines of "no way did I print that much" etc... sorry luv, papercut don't lie

 

I keep 1 spare set of toners in and control usage using Print Manager Plus which was bolted down pretty hard and, as of today, has become downright nasty.

 

A 27% increase in printing with evidence that, of the printing done this academic year, one third was done by one user(!), another third by one department and the final third by everyone in the rest of the school means that there was a unanimous SMT decision on today's actions. I quite enjoyed myself setting it up. Especially as I'm on a course tomorrow and will be safely out of harm's way as brown stuff starts to fly!

 

Run away..... !

 

Similar situation here - ironically the user in question claims to be a bit of an eco-warrior - you know the sort "did you drive all those 20 miles into work today" and the stupid "think before you print" on the bottom of his emails

Edited January 27, 2010 by Oops_my_bad

[featured_spectre]

My dept used CP-Ltd because of price and quality, but in the 5 days I was off recently , my school decided (without me) that they were to buy 2 Riso's (Cold start and colour), which in a way is cheaper. Costs £3000 a year to lease, but we do not pay for toner or repairs. Plus in terms of cost of toner and ink, we actually save around £600 a year overall because of it.

[localzuk]

My dept used CP-Ltd because of price and quality, but in the 5 days I was off recently , my school decided (without me) that they were to buy 2 Riso's (Cold start and colour), which in a way is cheaper. Costs £3000 a year to lease, but we do not pay for toner or repairs. Plus in terms of cost of toner and ink, we actually save around £600 a year overall because of it.

 

Are you sure about, firstly, the colour part - Riso do a colour model but it is huge and very expensive to lease in my experience (£6k per year for the machine IIRC), their usual colour is spot colour - where you can swap a drum out and use a different colour ink to print with. Also, the cost of ink - you pay a cost per click usually.

 

We have found that our Riso is just not worth the cost, our normal copiers are more cost friendly!

[bossman]

We use printer credits for the students as follows:

 

Years 7 - 9 receive 30 printer credits per week

Years 10 and 11 receive 50 credits per week

 

depending which printer they print from it will cost them:

 

Mono = 2 credits

Colour ICT suites = 5 credits

Colour Art and Technology suites (A3) = 10 credits

 

All Staff have only printing rights to their own dept printers and have unlimited credits for these but they pay for their toner out of their dept budget which makes them think twice about printing too much.

 

We have a reprographics room which they can use for mass printing which is managed by an admin staff member and orders for work have to be in at least 24 hours in advance.

 

I have tried to bring this reprographics into the 21st century so that the reprographics are networked and could be presented with a web front end so that staff could actually print from home under a managed print system and be charged accordingly which would come from their dept budget.

 

I met with a little resistance from some of the admin staff well one admin staff member to be correct who thought I was undermining her position within the school (in fact it would make it so much easier for her to fulfil her role) and allow her to get on with other admin duties.

 

Paper is managed by own dept budgets except for the ICT suites and staff room for which I manage the budget.

 

Toners for the ICT suites, I bulk buy to get the costs down and manage it by previous years usage plus printer reports.

 

It all seems to work and the annual budget has decreased by 50% since I began 8 years ago.

[featured_spectre]

yeah I am certain, when they arrived I looked over the costs. At our printing levels it only costs £3000 (or just over), and we have PCounter in place to prevent staff printing / photocopying to excess

[chris57]

we try have standard printers of lexmark laser printers and hp business injets so we dont need to buy lots of different stock, and keep stock of at least two of each cartridge. school printing budget pays for any network printers toner and paper and department pay for local printers ink.

[tommej]

When I arrived at this school there was a mishmash of different desktop printers and inkjets. I've since tried to standardize everyone to 3 different networked printers depending on their needs (2 of which use the same toner carts) I try to keep 2 of every toner in stock, or more depending on which printer and demand. We have a duplicate book here we write in each time we replace a toner cartridge and staff sign. Their department is then billed for the toner (eventually!).

 

There is a b&w photocopier and a colour photocopier which I have nothing to do with and they are looked after by the front office staff .

[maniac]

Slowly sorting printing out in this school, I've managed to sneakily bin all the cheap crappy inkjet printers now, so we have exclusively laser printers, except Art who have a couple of A3 inkjets which they look after themselves.

 

We run Papercut for our print management. We issue credits on a termly basis.

 

Students get 100 credits

Staff get 200 credits for personal use

Departments get 1000 credits, apart from enterprise who get 2000 as they are a heavy IT based subject.

 

Printing costs the following:

 

A4 mono page = 1 credit

A4 colour page = 2 credits

A3 colour page = 5 credits

 

When a staff member prints they can chose whether to charge their department budget or personal budget.

 

Admin and senior teachers aren't credited, although their printing is still logged.

 

We have a restriction of 3 copies per document, any more than that and we expect staff to use the photocpying facilities. We also have a restriction of printing the same document within 60 seconds, mainly put in pace to stop people bypassing the 3 copies rule, although seriously some teachers will sit there and religeously print the same document 3 times every 60 seconds until they've got the number of copies they want - it would have been quicker to have walked to the photocopier. Needless to say when these teachers ask for more credit, we make it clear that we can see they've been bypassing the rules and they only get a small amount extra.

 

Anything called Document* is rejected to encourage students to save their work before printing.

 

As an additional rule, student printing has to be approved by a member of staff to most printers. When they print their documents, it goes into a queue and won't print until a member of staff clicks allow in the print management interface. We introduced this after the first few weeks when students were using up their credits within a few days printing rubbish out to the printers, so we had to give staff more control over what was being printed. Some staff like this, others see it as an inconvenience, but it works quite well overall.

 

Toner wise, I buy compatibles from the local branch of cartridgeworld who deliver the next day, and it gives me a place to go back to in person if there's any problems with them. So far no problems at all. We keep at least 2 in stock of the popular models of printer in the school, and 2 of each colour for the colour printers we have. Some of the lesser popular models we only order when papercut gives us a warning that the printer has below 10% toner left, which it does a summary of by e-mail once a day. Toner is centrally provided by ICT to prevent 'ownership' issues if I decide to re-allocate the printers in the school.

 

All in all, quite controlled here although papercut met with a lot of resistance when first introduced, but had the backing of SMT and others within the school and has now been accepted as the norm.

 

Mike.

Edited January 28, 2010 by maniac