The flexibility of distribution and usage of printers in the enterprise contributes to an effective workflow, though, it makes it difficult to track who is printing what, where, when, and why they are printing it. As printer-associated costs are growing rapidly due to information proliferation and color printing, and printing budgets often do not match actual printing expenses, businesses need to control their printing expenses, by implementing a mechanism to manage their printer-associated expenses.

In addition, some users disapprove of having their print jobs reviewed by others, and those users usually get “Private” printers which are hard to control and have high running costs. And, due to the huge cost difference between color printing and black & white (about 10 fold), there is a need for color tracking per print job and user.

PrintController is the ideal solution to solve these issues by providing a powerful print management and auditing system, with tools to monitor, allocate, and optimize the printing costs.

PrintController's most desired features are: Tracking of network as well as private printers. Print quota per user. Color printing permission per user. The ability to differentiate between color and B&W, when a combined color and B&W job is printed. It is possible to charge every print job to customer, department, project, etc. Large print job pop-up to confirm the printing – this is to avoid user mistakes; it can also provide an estimated cost of a print job prior to printing it. Follow-me concept – user does not need to designate a specific printer, the print job can be printed on any printer. Secure printing - takes care of printout confidentiality, and of a common problem that organizations suffer from - multiple print of the same job, because the printout disappeared, or because the user forgot to pick up the print job. Billing information export in common formats. Intuitive graphic report generator.

Features

PrintController provides answers to major printer-associated issues in the organization, Issues as:  

ý      Confidentiality - Users disapprove of having their print jobs reviewed by others.

ý      Multiple printing of the same print job, because the printout disappeared from the printer, and due to printers malfunctions. 

ý      Printing budgets often do not match actual printing expenses.

ý      Corporate employees tend to abuse the corporate "printing freedom", causing unnecessary expenses.

ý      Difficulties in accurately charging & billing print jobs done for customers, projects and other external entities.

ý      Verification of printer-vendor monthly bill, to actual printing activities in the organization.

ý      Accurate Tracking of printers' malfunctions & level of service.

ý      Organizations tend to provide “Private” printers to privileged employees - These are hard to control and have high running costs.

PrintController's provides the following solutions:

ý      Secure printing - Takes care of printout confidentiality, and a common issue that organizations suffer from - multiple print of the same job, because the printout was not picked up by the user.

ý      Color management – "Allow Color Print" per user.

ý      User Quota - A monthly quota can be set up per user.

ý      Large Print Job Confirmation - The user will get a warning message when attempting to print large print jobs, this is used to prevent user mistakes, and needs a user confirmation to execute the print job.

ý      Charge each print job - An optional feature that pops up a checkbox to enter the specific billing name/number of the print job - a billing record is than generated.

ý      Billing mechanism – Easy set-up of printing costs per printer and form size. Possibility to export database for billing purpose.

ý      Reporting tools – Billing reports, Time analysis reports and, Failure analysis reports.