Validate page counts using hardware checks

Enabling hardware checks

To enable the print job hardware checks:

1. Click the Printers tab.

   The Printer List page is displayed.

2. Select a printer.

   The Printer Details page is displayed showing the Summary tab contents.

3.  In the Advanced Configuration area, select the Validate page counts after printing (hardware check) check box.

   

4. In When a difference in page counts is detected, select how to handle a difference in page counts between the printer and PaperCut NG/MF:

   

   • Show differences in the log status. Do not adjust

     The page count differences are recorded against the print job, but no adjustments are made to the page counts or job costs. This is the default option when hardware checks are enabled.

     This mode is useful when you want to use the hardware check information to validate refund requests by users. In this case the administrator can verify that a user's job did not complete printing and then refund the job.

     The hardware check information is displayed in the print log status and also in the refund screens.

   • Apply differences and adjust the print cost automatically

     In this mode, the hardware check information is also recorded on the print jobs as described above. However, any differences in page count and costs are automatically applied to the job.

     For example, if a user printed a 5 page document costing $0.50, and they canceled the job after only 3 pages were printed, the job cost would be reduced to $0.30 and the user would be refunded $0.20.

     In rare situations, the hardware check can report an increased number of pages. For example, this might happen when a print job is corrupted and prints out 100s of pages of "junk" instead of what the user printed. In this case, the hardware check reports an increased number of pages resulting in an increased cost. By default, PaperCut NG/MF does not apply the adjustments to the job if the cost would increase.

     If you would prefer to apply the differences even if the cost is increased, select Always apply cost adjustments.

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     To enable the hardware page counts quickly on multiple printers, use the Copy settings to other printers action available on the left of screen.

5. Click OK.

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On Windows print servers, this setting can take up to two minutes to take effect. You can speed this up by restarting the PaperCut Print ProviderA Print Provider is a monitoring service installed on a secondary print server to allow PaperCut to control and track printers. This monitoring component intercepts the local printing and reports the use back to the primary Application Server. service.

NOTE

If you have hardware page countHardware page counts allow PaperCut to determine the actual number of pages printed rather than just the page count from the spool file. The hardware page count is used when jobs do not print completely, for example, the print job is canceled. These checks are performed at the hardware-level by communicating with the printer via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). validation enabled, you must ensure the list of printer errors specified for release-station.block-release-on-printer-error.error-list does NOT include any errors excluded for hardware page count validation. For more information, see Block release of print jobs to printers in error with hardware check.