Why use multiple personal accounts?

There are a number of reasons why a site might use multiple personal accounts, but the most common is the need to separate “free” print quotas from cash payments. Common reasons for considering multiple accounts are:

Separating quota and cash

Many sites such as colleges, schools, and universities allow users to pay for printing using TopUp/Pre-Paid cards or credit card using a payment gateway, such as PayPal or Authorize.Net. When cash payments and “free” quota are combined into a single account balance it is not possible to give cash refunds without potentially refunding quota amounts.

Using multiple accounts to separate “quotas” and “cash” has a number of benefits:

1. Simplified auditing and tracking of cash payments and refunds.

2. Allows for refunding of unused cash payments at the end of year or enrollment.

3. Making cash payments does not interfere with “not to exceed” quota thresholds.

For more information about this configuration, see Example 1: Separate Cash/Quota Accounts .

Independently managed work areas

In some more large and complex environments each department or faculty independently manage and control their own printer fleet. In these situations the departments might want to assign a “free” quota to their members/students that should only be used on their own printers. Any “free” quotas allocated from other departments must not be used on this department’s printers. If the user adds cash to their account, it can be used in any department.

In most environments this configuration is not required because the print policy is managed centrally. This is useful when implementing a centralized PaperCut installation in an environment where the departments historically had independent control of print policy. Using this configuration is the first phase in a transition to a fully centralized system.

This is an advanced configuration. For more information, see Example 2: Department/Faculty Quotas (Advanced) .