Thank you for trying this evaluation of Printer Squirrel / Printer Sprite.
This document pertains mainly to Printer Squirrel but also applies to Printer Sprite (although the latter has less features)
Firstly a description of what Printer Squirrel does and how it works.
Printer Squirrel 2 is an application that monitors print jobs being sent to printers, and sets charges. It is particularly useful in situations where charging for printing needs to occur instantaneously or where a number of individuals or groups are working together using the same equipment, but are financially unrelated and thus need to be charged accordingly.
Printer Squirrel 2 records details such as the user who sent the job, job title, printing parameters and the number of pages printed for each print job, and then assigns a charge for the job. Users can be organised into functional groups and usage reports and charts can be produced for each group. Reports on printer usage can also be automatically emailed printed or saved to file.
Printer Squirrel 2 now uses a Client/Server technology where logger clients collect print logs and send them across the network to a logging server. This allows for great flexibility in printer logging configurations, almost any printer can easily be logged and logs can be sent to the logging server across a LAN, WAN or even the internet.
Printer Squirrel Features:
· Instant cost recovery: In situations such as print shops or internet cafes where customers are charged for printing as it is performed, Printer Squirrel can log the performed jobs, calculate charges and produce invoices instantly.
· Recovering consumable costs: Often, the owner of the printer is responsible for supplying the consumables such as ink, toner and paper, and financing any repairs to the printer. By charging the users for their print jobs, funds are then available for these ongoing expenses. Staff in many workplaces are required to record the number of pages printed etc manually on an appropriate form as an attempt to recover costs. However, comparisons between manual and electronic records at several sites have shown an honesty rate of only about 13%. That is, 87% of the jobs printed are never logged manually.
· Recovering capital costs: When a printer breaks down or is in need of replacement, it can often be difficult to find someone who is willing to cover the cost. Printer Squirrel can display exactly who prints what proportion of jobs and therfore will clearly show the primary users and who should be financing these costs. Printer Squirrel will also print this data in chart form to demonstrate use even more clearly.
· Determine printer life cycle: Printers have a certain life span and it is advantageous to budget for replacement. With Printer Squirrel the ongoing number of printed pages can be displayed. This can help to establish better timeliness and budgeting for printer replacement.
· Monitor what is being printed: Because Printer Squirrel keeps logs of the filenames that are being printed, it also displays the filenames of any undesirable or unauthorised documents which may have been printed.
· Security: Printer access permissions are usually set up on the printer server, but by browsing the print logs it is easy to establish if unauthorised users are accessing a printer.
· Curiosity: It is sometimes beneficial to see exactly what a printer is being used for.
Printer Squirrel Limitations:
· Operating System: Printer Squirrel will not run on Windows98 or lower as the necessary API's are not present.
Printer Squirrel history:
Consumables for some printers can be very expensive. At one particular site a Hewlet Packard 8550 color laser printer at a capital cost of around $15 000 was being used centrally. This machine uses 4 different toner cartridges (magenta,yellow,cyan and black) which cost around $150 each to replace. The cost in toner alone was $5 400 per annum, but with manual recording the amount recovered was only $2 100 per annum. Naturally the shortfall had to be found from somewhere, in this case the department of the 'owner' of the printer. As this was unacceptable, a software solution was sought to cover these requirements - to identify the owner of a print job and to be able to split the owners into groups for billing. As there appeared to be no suitable software available commercially, the first version of Printer Squirrel was developed. When applied to this particular site the software cost (the cost for Printer Squirrel) was recovered in just 7.6 hours, and a profit of about $6 800 per annum was attained and set aside for printer maintenance and replacement.
Printer Squirrel has now been refined and installed at another eight test sites. The results have varied, but the maximum payback time on the capital cost of the software was 4 days.
If you have some or all the requirements mentioned above, then we are certain that Printer Squirrel can be applied to your particular situation and that it will become an invaluable and profitable tool.
The LyGil team
Getting started