What is PaperCut print software?

Overview:

What is PaperCut?

PaperCut MF is a print management software that is embedded on printers, photocopiers and MFDs to monitor and control an organisations print output with simple, easy to use administrative tools that can be accessed anywhere on the network. The software is sold and supported by a global reseller network, which Midshire is part of at the highest level, having Platinum Partner status.

From universities with large printer fleets, right down to a small company with a single desktop printer, PaperCut MF can be used to track printing, provide simple reporting and set rules and restrictions to ultimately ensure you are fully in control of your printing.

There are a number of scenarios that can be setup on PaperCut:

• Background activity monitoring
• Visible activity monitoring for expense tracking for departments, projects or individuals
• Allowance enforcement
• Charge per print
• Job rules set up to restrict printing in colour or encouraging duplex printing
• Redirection to the most efficient device for a particular job.

Ware the benefits of PaperCut?

There are many benefits of PaperCut, the most important one is that it reduces the overall printing cost, through job filtering, enforcing quotas and even generating direct cost recovery. PaperCut is proven to reduce a company’s print volume by up to 15%. PaperCut puts the accountability of printing onto individual users or departments, by tracking activity granularly. It also creates environmental awareness by drawing the user’s attention towards the impact of their specific usage – if the user can see that printing a 50 page document is directly impacting the environment, they may choose to read the document on their screen rather than printing it.

PaperCut also improves efficiency by allowing administrators to create rules that can steer printing to designated printers for load balancing, to implement follow me printing or to redirect print jobs based on defined criteria. This could include whether a document is black and white or colour, or based on the number of copies or pages needing to be produced. If it is a simple black and white document, then a mono printer might be preferential, leaving the colour device for users that want to print in colour, whereas a document with hundreds of copies required may be directed to a higher speed device, which will be more efficient than a small desktop.

One of the main benefits of PaperCut, is the fact that it requires the user to log-in to the MFD to start their print job. This means that you don’t have to sift through hundreds of sheets of, potentially confidential, documents printed by a fellow colleague to find your documents. Instead nothing prints till the person that pressed print goes to collect their job. This can also help to encourage responsible behaviours, as the user might decide that the 100 pages of website content they pressed print on, actually isn’t important when they go to collect their printing.

Understanding the Print Process Workflow with PaperCut

If you set up a quota control on your device, here is an example of what happens:

1. John is a student at a high school, he has logged onto the network and is browsing the internet. He presses print from the webs browser to print a page for his school assignment, this web page will be 5 sheets.
2. The network administrator has allocated John a budget of £40.00 per term for printing, at £0.10 per page. He can see he has £35.00 left on his budget via the PaperCut User Client web portal.
3. He walks up to the printer and logs in using a swipe card, and confirmation screen listing the number of pages and cost per page is displayed on the printer’s screen.
4. John confirms he is happy to print the job and the 5 sheets come out of the printer.
5. The network administrator then charges John £0.50 for the job, and his budget is now £34.50. He can continue to print till he has used all his budget.