Tracking Printer Trays
PaperCut is not able to detect different tray selections (unless they are loaded with different paper sizes). At a technical level this is very difficult as each driver implements tray selection using different methods - there is no one standard. We may consider tray selection as a future feature on selected popular printer models, however in the meantime consider the options presented below.
The main reason for needing to track at the printer-tray level is to charge different amounts for special paper such as transparencies and/or photo quality paper. There are two possible options to archive this objective within the current functionality:
- Businesses running PaperCut ChargeBack can consider using the Charge Rates feature.
- Use multiple-physical print queues with different default tray selections (see below).
Tray rates using multiple queues:
Charging different amounts for different trays can be achieved by implementing multiple print queues that map to the same physical printer. Each logical print queue has a different default tray and the tray selection settings is restricted so it can't be changed by end users. For example:
- Printer XYZ Standard Paper (locked default to Tray 1)
- Printer XYZ Transparency (locked default to Tray 2)
Then it is possible to set different costs on the logical printers (representing trays) inside PaperCut.
Categories: Printers, TipsAndTricks