About print quotas and restrictions

📖 For instructions on how to configure print quotas and restrictions, see Configure print quotas and restrictions .

Printing and the infrastructure required to support it (printer hardware, toner, paper, and the tech who un-jams and maintains the printers) are limited network resources. And as an IT admin, part of your day-to-day is keeping an eye on potential opportunities to save your organization resources.

Enter print quotas in PaperCut Hive and Pocket: a way to apply a limit to printing that’s can be automatically assigned each day, week, month, or year. With print quotas, IT admins can allocate printing allowances (budgets) to users, monitor usage, and ensure responsible resource utilization. Print quotas help your users make decisions about what they’re printing, like “Is it worth it?”… “Do I really need it?”. It is an effective way to reduce and control costs, and promote responsible printer use in a network environment.

Think of print quotas as a smart allowance system for printing! They let you set spending limits for your users and groups, just like giving everyone a financial printing budget. This encourages users to be more accountable for how many print resources they use. Using print quotas is a key way to control print usage costs in an organization.

Terminology

Print quotas and restrictions overview

Do you want to stop print costs from spiraling out of control, limit user printing, prevent unnecessary and unwanted printing, and eliminate deliberate waste? This feature is your new best friend. It keeps users mindful of their printing and lets IT admins manage costs.

This can be a divisive subject since everyone generally prefers having stuff for free. However, setting a reasonable printing limit can start to make some big savings while giving admins predictability over print costs — no more surprises when someone prints 200 vacation photos of their trip to Rio de Janeiro!

Setting up print quotas and restrictions (limits on users printing according to their account balance) tackles things like:

• runaway printing costs
• unfair and unclear resource sharing and consumption
• paper and toner waste
• environmental problems
• keeping individual printing in check
• “going green” and promoting sustainability
• helping everyone print more responsibly.

But maybe skip it if you only have a few printers.

Use quotas to set spending limits that work for everyone. PaperCut handles all the tracking automatically, so you can focus on more important things.

Benefits of implementing quotas and restrictions for user accounts

Setting up print quotas and limits brings some amazing perks to your organization.

Budget superhero powers — Save money and stop budget blowouts before they happen! With quotas in place, you can keep printing costs perfectly predictable—no more end-of-month surprises or explaining to finance why the paper bill is through the roof.

Fair share for everyone — Like slicing up a cake, quotas make sure everyone gets their fair portion of printing resources. Set unique print allowances for individuals to match specific needs. Mix and match quotas however you want. No more department printing wars or that one person who prints the entire internet…

Automatic cost control — After you set quotas in PaperCut Hive or Pocket, the system automatically keeps spending in check. Quotas can automatically reset daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or at any time you choose. It’s like having an accountant watching every user and printer.

Better printing habits — When users can see their balance ticking down, they think twice about printing that 100-page PDF. Watch how quickly people discover the preview button when they have a quota. You’ll significantly reduce unnecessary printing, cut costs, and save resources. Plus no more “but I didn’t know I was out of credit!” Users can check their balance anytime in their User Portal.

Environmental high-five — Less unnecessary printing means happy trees. Quotas naturally encourage people to think before they print, leading to less waste and a greener organization.

And you can get creative; boost the benefits of using print quotas with extra messaging and initiatives! Here are some interesting ideas that some of our business customers have adopted over the years when using print quotas.

• Empower employees on how to spend all the money saved by using print quotas. Printing budgets were compared one year to another, and the entire year of savings was spent on the IT systems of their choice. This helped smooth the transition on an aggressive IT policy.
• A large business combined the environmental impact message with cost savings, both internally in the staff newsletters and externally in the shareholders’ prospectus, to create a win-win message for the business and the environment. (And make the IT department look like heroes.)
• Mix your cost-saving message with an environmental message. The WWF has a great office printing environmental impact guide .

Example customer scenarios and outcomes

Here are some examples of customer journeys, scenarios, and triggers for various organizations and business sectors to give you a broad overview of how you might use Print Quotas.

Common cost control scenario

The most common way to implement quotas is to set an account balance for each user and consider that balance as the user’s print quota (printing limit). Then, set up PaperCut to restrict the user from releasing any print jobs when there aren’t enough funds in the account to cover the job cost.

That way, when the user tries to release the print job (via the printer’s touchscreen or the PaperCut Hive or Pocket mobile app), they will see a print denial message informing them they don’t have sufficient funds.

Common budgeting and reporting scenario

You can also schedule print quotas, which regularly deposit money or credit into the user accounts. You can do this for restricted and unrestricted accounts.

In this scenario, for accounting and reporting purposes you set a periodic quota for all users, for example, $100 a month as a target budget. You then track negative balances in the Users list to find out who is printing more than the budgeted amount.

Education scenarios

One particular sector that benefits from print quotas is education. By implementing print quotas or print charging, the old adage “if you give a student something for free, they will use it” becomes a thing of the past.

It’s been proven that many PaperCut educational customers have reduced their printing costs by up to 75%. So, it’s worth exploring these features more.

• In K12s, print quotas are really powerful as they teach students responsibility and the value of money. It’s amazing how quickly students adopt black and white printing when they are restricted to a quota.
• Most educational organizations implement a “use it or lose it” time-based quota policy. This prevents funds banking up and large print volumes at the end of the year.

Education scenarios

• A school wants to stick to a printing budget, see which students and staff print the most, and review if printing could be minimized.
• A school needs to manage high-volume printing in a dedicated print room (reprographic room/copier room).
• A university resets student quotas each semester.
• A high school gives teachers unlimited printing but restricts student printing.
• A K-12 school tracks and reports on student printing and teacher/staff printing.

Education outcomes

• Stop users from printing excessively and improve their printing behavior by setting up time-based student quotas.
• Keep users mindful of their printing usage.
• Stop students from printing too much unnecessarily.
• Stop contractors and outside agencies from over-using school printing infrastructure.
• Top up a student’s quota if a student exceeds their print quota and requests a top-up—just add funds through the PaperCut Hive or Pocket admin console.
• Allocate a fixed monthly print allowance to each teacher for classroom materials. Any overuse requires approval from the admin.
• Give students a monthly quota. If they exceed their printing quota, they have to top up their balance using personal funds by going to a student services counter.

Example implementation cues

• Start of a new academic year, semester, or term.
• Student printing abuse.
• Budget constraints.

Healthcare scenarios

Healthcare scenarios

• A medical office separates prescription printing from general printing.
• A clinic tracks printing costs per practitioner.
• A hospital manages printing budgets across different wards.

Healthcare outcomes

• Set different quotas for administrative versus medical staff.
• Manage secure printing budgets.
• Track costs per department.

Example implementation cues

• Compliance requirements.
• Cost allocation needs.
• Department budget management.

Large organizations scenarios

Large organizations scenarios

• Operational offices spread across the country, disconnected from the main office (absolutely out of control).
• A government department must ensure printing costs stay within fiscal year budgets.

Large organizations outcomes

• Complete control of printing (and scanning) activities, even from locations not directly connected.
• Bulk actions are used to select multiple users for one-off actions, like giving a set of users additional money, for example, to print for a company event.

Example implementation cues

• Cost reduction initiatives.
• New environmental sustainability goals.
• Raising user awareness of both costs and environmental impact.

Small and medium sized businesses (SMB) scenarios

SMB scenarios

• Keep track of users even without a domain control.
• Enable guest users to print under control.

SMB outcomes

• Set simple quotas for all staff in a real estate business.
• Create special allowances for the marketing staff.
• Create a quota for a guest user.
• Leave the accounting office free (they already have other problems to deal with!)

Example implementation cues

• Growing printing costs.
• Limited printer resources.
• Staff printing large and/or expensive non-work related documents.

Best practices

You can find a ton of guidance for best practices in the Top 10 best practices for implementing Print Quotas in education article.

Print quotas in detail

• How job costs and print quotas are related
• Why use quotas over other methods of limiting printing?
• Scheduling quotas
• Ways of monitoring print costs without print quotas

How job costs and print quotas are related

Before you set up print quotas, you need to enable Cost Tracking and set up per-page job costs. That’s because job costs are part an imperative part for print quotas work:

1. A user prints a job.
2. The user goes to release the job.
3. Before releasing the job, PaperCut Hive or Pocket checks the job’s cost (calculated by the per-page costs configured for the printer in Cost Tracking) against the user’s balance.
4. If the job’s cost is less than the available balance (or overdraft limit), the job is released; otherwise the job is blocked from release until the user’s balance is increased.

Enabling Cost Tracking also enables viewing user balances in the Users List on the Users page.

Why use quotas over other methods of limiting printing?

By tying printing to a monetary balance, the organization can precisely manage, and have predictability over, printing expenses, making it easy to budget while preventing overspending and waste.

A quota system makes users more aware of the cost of printing. When they have a limited budget, they are more likely to think before they print, reducing unnecessary print jobs and promoting responsible printing habits. This can significantly reduce overall print volume, which also helps the environment.

Quotas offer great flexibility. Different users can have different quotas based on their needs. The cost of printing can also be adjusted as needed, and the system can easily accommodate different paper sizes, color printing, etc., by assigning appropriate costs to specific printers. For example, by setting lower costs per page for duplex printing, users are encouraged to print double-sided, reducing paper consumption. This behavior incentive wouldn’t be available on a page-based quota system.

PaperCut automates the process of tracking and enforcing print limits. After the quotas are set, the software handles the rest, reducing the need for admins to manually monitor and intervene. This saves time and resources.

[COMING SOON] Users can see their balance in their User Portal and understand the cost of each print job. This transparency can reduce complaints and improve user satisfaction.

Scheduling quotas

You can schedule a quota, that is, set a regular automatic credit deposit into user accounts.

You can also reset the balance to a specific amount, or subtract an amount from the balance.

Scheduling can only be done via user groups. For instructions, see Schedule a recurring quota for a user group .

All users in that group will have their balance adjusted according to the action chosen in the quota schedule. Ways of monitoring print costs without print quotas

Ways of monitoring print costs without print quotas

An organization might not want to use quotas to manage user balances and restrict users from printing, but still want to track the cost of print and copy jobs. In this case they can simply use PaperCut Hive’s Cost Tracking feature, which gives users unrestricted printing but monitors it all.

This is a common scenario in commercial organizations. Because PaperCut Hive allows organizations to create different cost profiles and assign them to different printers, Cost Tracking helps with financial planning and budgeting.

Restrictions in detail

• “Restricted” accounts stop users from releasing a print job based on the balance
• When and why to use Restricted and Unrestricted accounts
• Differences between restricting print/copy jobs and scan/fax jobs
• How overdrafts restrict printing
• Updating balances and restrictions by using bulk actions
• Users and groups

“Restricted” accounts stop users from releasing a print job based on the balance

“Restricted” is the term for accounts that are set up to stop users from releasing print jobs if they don’t have sufficient credit in their account to cover the job cost. Users can still submit the print jobs to the PaperCut Printer regardless of their balance, but they won’t print until there is enough balance.

Restricting print jobs applies to all printer brands that support account restrictions.

For example, if a print job costs $0.05 and the user’s account balance is has $0.01, when they try to release the job to print (either on the printer touchscreen or via the PaperCuth Hive or mobile app), this message is displayed:

Insufficient funds

You do not have sufficient balance to release the job(s).
Balance: $0.01
Total cost: $0.05

When and why to use Restricted and Unrestricted accounts

Organizations apply print quotas in different ways, depending on whether their goals are to restrict excessive printing or whether they simply want to keep track of printing costs. Let’s take a look at some examples of how this works in the real world.

Restrict all users

An organization that wants to place strict limits on user printing might set all users to be Restricted with an overdraft limit of $0, then give all users a balance of $X. When the users’ balance reaches $0, the users can’t print anymore — or if they want to, they’ll have to make their case to the IT Admin!

Restrict some users, don’t restrict other users

This is a common scenario in places like schools, where students might need some encouragement to limit printing but teachers always need to be able to print. In this situation, the students would be Restricted to an overdraft limit of $0, but teachers remain Unrestricted users.

Don’t restrict any users

This might be a good option for organizations that just want to keep track of printing behavior for accounting and reporting purposes. For example, a real estate company may schedule a $100 monthly quota for its users but leave their accounts Unrestricted. This way, even if the users’ balances reach $0, they can still print — it would be awkward if a contract couldn’t be printed in time! — but the organization can still keep tabs on how much people are printing and talk to any users that may be printing excessively.

Differences between restricting print/copy jobs and scan/fax jobs

Print jobs

Secure release (Find-Me): PaperCut Printer — PaperCut Printer is the printer name the end-user must select on their computer to submit a job to the secure release print queue. Users can always submit print jobs to the print queue regardless of their user balance amount. When a user’s account is restricted, the restriction will apply at the step of releasing a print job from the queue. If the user doesn’t have sufficient credit, they won’t be able to print jobs that cost more than what they have in credit, which includes the overdraft.

[COMING SOON] Direct print jobs: Print queues — Currently, quotas do not apply to jobs printed via direct print queues. The print jobs will always print and their costs will be charged to the user’s account.

Direct print jobs: passive tracking — Print quotas don’t apply to print jobs sent to any printer that doesn’t use the PaperCut Printer (see About print tracking ). If the printer used to print the job is added to the PaperCut Hive or Pocket and it has a cost profile associated with it, the job will print and the cost will be charged against the user’s balance. If you don’t want the printer’s jobs to have any costs, for example, if it’s someone’s home printer, then just remove this printer from any cost profile.

Copy jobs

Restricting copy jobs requires separate software development for each printer brand. Development for copy control has started on Sharp.

Restricting copy jobs for printer brands without the functionality set up

Currently copy jobs are unrestricted, that is, even if the balance is $0 or has an overdraft, the cost of copy jobs will still be charged against the user’s account balance, which will continue to go into negative.

If you enable Restricted on a user account, it will only restrict the release of print jobs if the user has insufficient balance.

[BETA] Restricting copy jobs for Sharp

A challenging characteristic of a copy job is that the printer doesn’t know how many pages the document being copied will have. Is it just 1 page? Or is it a 200-page contract?

When a user account is set to Restricted and a user does a copy job on a Sharp photocopier, these scenarios will apply:

More than sufficient balance — The user can start and finish their copy job. The cost will be deducted from their balance.

Balance that is sufficient for part of the job — if a user has a $2 balance on a Restricted account and tries to do a copy job that would cost $5, the printer will try to stop when the balance reaches $0 (or if an overdraft is set, the overdraft limit). Even if the account is set to restrict jobs at $0 — that is, with no overdraft — some pages of the copy job might still be printed after the balance reaches $0. This will then bring the balance into the negative, as there is a delay in the printer’s reaction to try to interrupt a copy job, which is also influenced by the printer’s pages-per-minute (ppm) speed.

Insufficient balance for 1 page — If a user doesn’t have available credit to do at least 1 page, such as having $0 or an overdraft that doesn’t have credit for copying 1 page, then they won’t be able to start a copy job.

Copy jobs — Tips for restricting copy jobs in other ways

Physical access — Consider restricting physical access to the photocopiers, for example, by having them in a room accessible only to the specific group of users who are allowed to do copy jobs.

Make copy jobs more expensive than print jobs — One way of making copy jobs less attractive than print jobs is by setting up much higher costs per page (using Cost Tracking) for copy jobs than for print jobs. Be sure to properly inform users at the photocopier at the time they’re doing the copy job.

Higher costs for copy jobs also helps save costs, as copy jobs use more parts in the machine: the document feeder, the moving light under the glass and the printing parts.

For instructions, see Configure Cost Tracking > Setting up custom costs for copy jobs.

Scan jobs

Scan jobs are always Unrestricted.

Fax jobs

Fax jobs are always Unrestricted.

How overdrafts restrict printing

Overdraft limits allow Restricted users to continue to release print jobs even though their account balances drop below zero. You can only set overdraft limits for restricted users. Here are some reasons to set an overdraft:

• You’re in an organization that’s tightly process-driven, and needs to ensure process continuity, especially where users need to complete urgent tasks, and their account balance is close to zero
• You’re in a school or university and need to provide students with a small buffer, ensuring they can complete essential printing tasks even if they’ve temporarily exhausted their allocated funds.
• You want to provide users with flexibility in their budget quota in an allocated period. For example, an overdraft allows user accounts to go into the negatives; they’re technically drawing on a portion of next month’s quota allocation in the current period.
• You could use an overdraft as a sort of credit system with credit limits rather than an upfront pay system, so some environments will allow users to go into the negative and then charge back that balance at a later time — a sort of credit system
• You want to be able to grant trusted users extra printing on a case-by-case basis.

For example, if the overdraft is $0, when the users try to release jobs that cost more than their balance, they will see a print denial message, either on the printer touchscreen or mobile app (the interfaces where end-users release secure print jobs).

Or you may have a scenario where you need only some very specific users to have an overdraft. In this case, you can use a bulk action to give them an overdraft, by editing the default $0 to something else.

Updating balances and restrictions by using bulk actions

A bulk action lets you apply settings to multiple users simultaneously. While PaperCut Hive and Pocket don’t yet synchronize user groups from an external directory, “bulk actions” let you speed up configuration.

The simplest way to use bulk actions is to first set the All Users group to restrict all users’ accounts. Next, in the Users list, manually select the users whose accounts you want unrestricted, then use the bulk action function to make their accounts unrestricted.

This is suitable for small schools or organizations where the number of people you want to be able to print is small enough to be selected manually.

For the full procedure, see Updating multiple or all user balances and restrictions .

Users and groups

Users

You can restrict an individual user by selecting them in the Users List, clicking Bulk actions, selecting Change account restrictions, then selecting your required settings.

You can select multiple specific users to have an overdraft. In this case, you can use a bulk action to give them an overdraft, by editing the default $0 to something else.

Groups

Currently there is one group, called [All Users]. Use this group when you want to:

• bulk change balances and user account restrictions for all users in a group
• configure automatic setup of print quotas and restrictions for new users
• Coming soon schedule a recurring quota for a user group

Coming soon Create additional groups to apply print quotas and restrictions to all members of each group

Default settings

Defaults user account settings are:

• Account balance is zero.
  By default, all users start with a $0 balance. Then, whenever they print or copy, the job cost is deducted from their user balance. So if the balance is $0, jobs with costs make this balance start going negative.
• account status is unrestricted.