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This paper describes how a good document accounting system can contribute to cost savings and increased productivity in Enterprises.

Trends
Paperless office is still a remote dream. More and more information is made available and distributed electronically. Users tend to print out the relevant information when they need it. (This may result in multiple copies).
To optimise the desk space per person and to reduce the operational cost, personal printers are replaced by cost-effective multifunctional units that combine the functions of a copier and a network printer.
Even with cost-effective multifunctionals and certainly when colour systems are introduced  a system must be put in place to manage the cost of printing and copying and to optimise the productivity of the users.

The environment
In larger enterprises, most people have their personal workstation at a fixed or variable desk. In open space offices multifunctionals are installed in such a way that they can be easily accessed with minimum disturbance for the other employees.
Flexibility and mobility of people and organisations make accounting per user, department and/or job a dynamic challenge.
In most enterprises, every employee has a personnel badge which identifies himself in a unique way. This badge is used for access control and time registration and can contribute to seamless accounting and an efficient usage of the multifunctionals.

Traps to avoid when introducing multifunctionals
If no accounting of printing and copying is used, some people may consume paper without any constraint or without considering the cost of printing and copying. Some people may use the professional copiers and printers for their private needs.
When a network printer is shared between several tens of people, one has to avoid that several print jobs pile up and imply administrative overhead to retrieve and distribute the printed documents. A small but important document (such as a contract or offer, risks to get lost between two larger print jobs and may reach the wrong destination.
To avoid the above traps, some multifunctionals support the activation through an access code. This is fine as long as everybody uses these secure access codes with discipline. Some people may forget their code or share their codes with others. In some cases everybody turns out to know and to use the public secret code of the secretary...

The Antenor solution.
To assure a reliable accounting system and to maximise the productivity of the personnel, Antenor and CMF have worked out an elegant solution, based on the existing badge systems.
Every multifunctional is equipped with an intelligent control terminal, adapted to work together with the badge system used by the personnel.  The control terminal is installed on the LAN and interfaces to the multifunctional in order to grant access and to account copies and prints.
All control terminals are managed through a central print server called Gespage (gestion de pages), which keeps track of all users, departments, printers, copiers and multifunctionals.
Every user can be assigned to a department.
It is possible to associate to each user a quote or budget. If required users can allocate print or copy jobs to certain classes or projects for detailed analytical accounting.
Printers, copiers or multifunctionals from different vendors can be defined in Gespage.  For each printer up to 4 different page prices can be defined (e.g. A3/A4,  BW or colour).  It is possible to predefine groups of equivalent printers to facilitate an effective ‘follow-me’ feature.

This is how it works:
If some-one wants to make copies, he/she presents the personnel badge to the copier or multifunctional.  The copy terminal reads the ID of the user and verifies the authority to copy with the Gespage server. When the user is regular and his budget is not exceeded, copies can be made.  During the copy-session, the accounts in Gespage are updated.
If some-one has launched one or several print jobs from a workstation, he/she may go to any of the printers or multifunctionals within a predefined group to present the personnel badge in exactly the same way as one would do to enter the parking or the entry door. Gespage identifies the user and verifies if there are printing jobs waiting.  The user may request all print jobs or select one specific document.  Gespage will keep track of the action for further accounting.

Conclusion.
Gespage is a vendor independent accounting system for printing and copying based on the usage of the existing personnel badges.
With Gespage a company can not only manage and control the cost of paper flow, it also contributes to a greater productivity through a simple and intuitive usage for the personnel.