PrintTrak is a cost effective print logging and accounting; solution in situations such as businesses, libraries, internet cafes and schools/universities where print costs need to be monitored and/or recovered.
PrintTrak monitors print jobs being sent to printers, recording details such as the user who sent the job, the name of the job and the number of pages printed for a the print job. Charging schemes can be easily set for each printer and users can be put into functional groups or classes.
PrintTrak 2.40 released See the versions page for more details.
What PrintTrak can do for you:
· Instant cost recovery: In situations such as print shops
or internet cafes where customers are charged for printing as it is performed,
PrintTrak can log the performed jobs, calculate charges and produce invoices
instantly.
Log view
· Recovering consumable costs: Often, the owner of the
printer is responsible for supplying the consumables such as ink, toner and
paper, and financing any repairs to the printer. By charging the users for
their print jobs, funds are then available for these ongoing expenses. Staff in
many workplaces are required to record the number of pages printed etc manually
on an appropriate form as an attempt to recover costs. However, comparisons
between manual and electronic records at several sites have shown an honesty
rate of only about 13%. That is, 87% of the jobs printed are never logged
manually.
· Recovering capital costs: When a printer breaks down or
is in need of replacement, it can often be difficult to find someone who is
willing to cover the cost. PrintTrak can display exactly who prints what
proportion of jobs and therfore will clearly show the primary users and who
should be financing these costs. PrintTrak will also print this data in chart
form to demonstrate use even more clearly.
Usage report
· Monitor what is being printed: Because PrintTrak keeps
logs of the filenames that are being printed, it also displays the filenames of
any undesirable or unauthorised documents which may have been printed.
· Security: Printer access permissions are usually set up
on the printer server, but by browsing the print logs it is easy to establish
if unauthorised users are accessing a printer.
· Curiosity: It is sometimes benficial to see exactly what a printer is being used for.
PrintTrak Limitations:
· Operating System: PrintTrak will not run on Windows98 or
lower as the necessary API's are not present, however the print jobs coming
from Windows98 or lower machines (or linux/mac) can be monitored.
Groups chart
PrintTrak history:
Consumables for some printers can be very expensive. At one particular site a Hewlet Packard 8550 color laser printer at a capital cost of around $15 000 was being used centrally. This machine uses 4 different toner cartridges (magenta,yellow,cyan and black) which cost around $150 each to replace. The cost in toner alone was $5 400 per annum, but with manual recording the amount recovered was only $2 100 per annum. Naturally the shortfall had to be found from somewhere, in this case the department of the 'owner' of the printer. As this was unacceptable, a software solution was sought to cover these requirements - to identify the owner of a print job and to be able to split the owners into groups for billing.
As there appeared to be no suitable software available commercially, the
first version of PrintTrak was developed. When applied to this particular site
the software cost (the cost for PrintTrak) was recoverd in just 7.6 hours, and
a profit of about $6 800 per annum was attained and set aside for printer
maintainance and replacement.
PrintTrak has now been refined and installed at another eight test sites. The
results have varied, but the maximum payback time on the capital cost of the
software was 4 days.
PrintTrak set up:
PrintTrak can be set to a number of levels depending on requirements:
1· Select a printer for logging to just view print jobs being sent to a
printer.
2· Set up charging parameters for a printer if print jobs need to be charged
for.
3· Create groups and assign people to them if print jobs need to be charged for
groups. People are automatically added by username as the first print job they
send is recorded. Or they can be added in bulk if there is an active directory
or domain controller present. The latter is useful for splitting people into
groups in one step, rather than having to wait for them to be assigned
individually as they print.
4· Set up email server parameters, and set the automatic email properties for
each printer if email reports of printer usage at specified intervals are
required.
If PrintTrak is set up correctly it becomes a set and forget system. Jobs are automatically recorded and reports are sent out to the appropriate people at specified intervals.
PrintTrak now uses a client/server technology where logger clients collect print logs and send them across the network to a logging server. This configuration allows for great flexibility in logging configurations, direct network connected printers can easily be logged and logs can be sent across a LAN, WAN or even the internet.
If it doesn't work for you - we want it back!
At LyGil Software we believe in happy customers. We believe all our products do their job, and do it well.
But we're realistic enough to know that our software isn't going to fit every situation. That's why we have a strong Refund policy.
If you have some or all the requirements mentioned above, then we are certain
that PrintTrak can be applied to your particular situation and that it will
become an invaluable and profitable tool.
The LyGil team
Requirements: Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/2003 Server/2008 Server
Cost: $59 US
LyGil Software is a
Software Industry Professionals
Member.