Managing printing budgets using printopia
Anyone have any solutions for managing printing budgets using printopia? Is the app print n share pro an option for this?
Replies
- Allanah King (View all users posts) 27 Aug 2012 10:17pm (297 days ago)
How are you managing your printing from your laptop already?
Do you have to put in a code or something to let you print.
In my class the students have to check with me before they print anything as they print through Printopia which is on my own laptop.
- Daniel Alcock (View all users posts) 27 Aug 2012 10:32pm (297 days ago)
Well we are currently printing through our hp laptops using an account code which is entered into the printing preferences. A couple of teachers at school have gone Mac and we are looking at setting up printopia on one of those however that means all printing will come from that persons printing budget.
In essence at the school we have two printing/copying accounts, one for the senior and one for the juniors.
Cheers
- Craig Harrison (View all users posts) 28 Aug 2012 12:32pm (296 days ago)
Hi Daniel,
We found that Printopia is smarter than that, and when you connect to the printer from the iPad it prompts for a username and password, and charges to that persons account and not the account of the laptop running printopia. So no problem with getting the right user to change. However it can not handle an account with more than one budget, so the users must have just one budget only. We have tried this using both PaperCut and SupervisorNet/Monitor cost recovery systems sucessfully.
We installed Printopia on a small Mac Mini server that we leave on all the time. The Mac Mini server can also do Time Machine backups of the laptops and other useful things and so may be a good investment if you are going to have more Apples and iOS devices.
Kind regards,
Craig.
- Daniel Alcock (View all users posts) 28 Aug 2012 2:22pm (296 days ago)
Cheers Craig. So I'm either looking for a way of having two versions of printopia on the same network, or changing our printing to one budget. Are you still using papercut?
- Craig Harrison (View all users posts) 28 Aug 2012 3:05pm (296 days ago)
Hi Daniel,
No, you have two users, one setup for the senior printing budget only, and one setup for the junior printing budget only. When you connect an iPad to a printer via Printopia you enter either one of these two usernames/password on the iPad depending on which budget you want that iPad to use. From then on all printing from that iPad will go to that budget.
We are now using SupervisorNet/Monitor for cost recovery rather than PaperCut but found both work the same with Printopia.
No need for two versions of printopia.
Kind regards,
Craig.
- Daniel Alcock (View all users posts) 28 Aug 2012 3:28pm (296 days ago)
Oh, got it! Thanks so much, I will give it a crack!
- Allanah King (View all users posts) 27 Aug 2012 10:37pm (297 days ago)
Seeing you only have two laptops that are printing maybe you should buy two licences- one for the juniors and one for the seniors.
Or on a PC Fingerprint http://www.collobos.com/ should work.
- Daniel Alcock (View all users posts) 28 Aug 2012 8:38am (296 days ago)
I have tried fingerprint trial but it wouldn't work.
I guess the problem at our school is we have threecopiers which we are printing to and they are all on the same network so we can't really install two versions of printopia.