Print accounting

[Eiolon]

I am looking for a way to track printing and it's purpose of the job rather than just the honor system of the user writing on paper how many pages and what it was for. We have a couple of network network printers (HP Officejet 8600 and Xerox ColorQube 8570) but the rest are USB with lots of shares set up. Any ideas on how to approach this?

 

[Evil_SPanKY]

Looks like PCounter is still around, and seems to be free from a cursory glance at webpage.

Used it about a decade ago to track some very basic printing/accounting codes on Windows and Novell, and worked well for what I needed at the time.

http://www.pcounter.com

 

[gimp]

Making the assumption that the users are connecting to printers being shared off a server, Windows does track this info.
Though, you have to enable the "Operational" PrintService logging in Server 2k8 and up.

Of course, it can be a chore figuring everything out since each print job logs 5 events.

 

[Snowknight26]

Of course, it can be a chore figuring everything out since each print job logs 5 events.

Not if you filter it on Event ID 307.