The Print Charging Strategy

The term print charging refers to a print control strategy where users are required to pay for their printing upfront. Access to the printers is not allowed until the user has sufficient funds in their printing account. It works as follows:

1. Mary is a student at a local high school. She needs to print her assignment. The cover page will be in color and the remainder in black and white.
2. She purchases a $5.00 TopUp Card from here school canteen and enters the registration number on a special web page on the school’s intranet site.
3. She now has $5.00 in her account and proceeds to print the document.
4. The first page is in color and costs $0.75. The remaining pages are black and white. She prints these on the Monochrome HP LaserJet at $0.20 per page.

Combining Print Charging with Print Quotas

A charging stagy is often used in conjunction with a Print Quotas solution where users are allocated an allowance – say $3.00 a week. If the user needs extra funds, they may be required to top up their account balance with their own money. This strategy is commonly used in primary schools and high schools.

How to Implement

PaperCut Software’s application PaperCut NG is the ideal solution for introducing and managing an environment implementing print charging. The payment process can be managed either using PaperCut NG’s TopUp Card system or done manually by office staff using a simple web browser based interface.

The PaperCut Quota software application is available for download from the main PaperCut website at:

Network managers or system administrators are also encouraged to use the PaperCut Quota Implementation Guide to help plan the installation and printing policy changes.

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