Placing a daily limit on the number of pages printed

PaperCut provides various types of filters and restrictions which are useful for education environments. It is possible to restrict users on a per job basis by pages, copies, cost. They are available under Printers → Filters & Restrictions. More detailed information about them is given here: Printing Filters and Restrictions.

Sometimes organizations would like to set a page limit for given time interval. For example, a number of Pages per day or pages per month. To be able to restrict a user to a number of pages in a given time interval advanced print scripting will need to be used. Detailed information on scripting is given on the Print Scripting details pages. Print Script API is listed in the chapter of the manual.

Scripts can be applied to a printer via Printers → [Name of the printer] → Scripting tab.

We have dozens of pre-defined recipes to help you achieve your requirements. e.g. to apply a daily limit of 10 color pages on your users, you will be able to use the already available recipe: “Daily color page limit”

To be able to apply this recipe on a per month basis, the recipe can be easily edited to meet your requirements. Instead of getting the currentDayIndex variable used in the script, you will need to get the currentMonthIndex.

For Example: var currentMonthIndex = inputs.job.date.getMonth();

Changing the names of the variables from “day” to “month” would be helpful too.

Someone with basic JavaScript experience in your organization should be able to help with editing these pre-defined recipes.

An alternative method

Sometimes where exact page limits are too broad, currency or unit-based accounting can be more more flexible. To do this, set up quota allocations for your users. This allows you to set up quotas on an individual basis or per group, and a single quota or a quota that gets renewed on a schedule (e.g. monthly).