Budgeting support

Budgets are the perfect way to limit print and copy activities. If a budget is exceeded, printing/ copying can be stopped altogether and users notified that funds have run out. Budgets can be enabled or disabled for individual users, groups and locations only.

Charging students for copying and printing

In educational establishments, where students and teachers must pay for their printing and copying, it is important to correctly track transactions and available funds. After login to the device, users see their remaining budget at the top of their print queue. uniFLOW Online calculates which jobs can be printed with the remaining budget and will reject any job(s) that exceed the budget. All costs incurred are deducted from a user's budget.

Balances can be recharged automatically by utilizing Microsoft PowerShell scripts, using PayPal™ or WebPageMarketing (WPM), or a cashier can add funds manually to a user's account where a personal cash-based system is required.

Double wallet system

Budget functionality has been designed to work with the double wallet concept differentiating between primary and secondary wallets to distinguish between top-ups made by an organization/ school and top-ups made by students or employees. The funds from both wallets are combined to make the total available budget which a user will use to print or copy. The primary wallet is charged first for print and copy costs. The secondary wallet is accessed once the primary wallet is depleted or has insufficient funds.

Refunding canceled print or copy jobs

Jobs might be canceled due to technical issues such as paper jams. Canceled print or copy jobs will automatically be refunded and shown in a relevant transaction entry. Each copy session lasts for a specific period; possible refunds are calculated after the session end which can take up to 30 minutes.

With budgets enforced, print jobs cannot be released in emergency mode i.e. the device cannot reach uniFLOW Online and users cannot print directly from cloud sources. Instead they need to 'Save to queue' before printing.