Planning Accounting

Choose the accounting mode before rolling out embedded terminals: changing it later means reactivating every terminal.

See also: Accounting

Accounting building blocks

Choosing an accounting mode

Use Accounting Group, the default, unless users must choose which account pays for each job.

Accounting Group accounts every job to the user's single group and spends all of the user's quotas. Cost Center lets users pick one of several accounts per job and spends only that account.

Cost Center considerations

• Not supported on printers without an embedded terminal (8.2+).

• A user with several accounts printing where they cannot choose: the job is paused until they select an account in MyQ Desktop Client.

• Where selection is not possible, Payment account priority (credit or quota) decides.

• Switching modes requires reactivating all terminals, from the Apply settings prompt or on each device.

Credit, quotas, and projects

Credit, quotas, and projects work in both Accounting Group and Cost Center mode.

• Credit: a balance per user, for all users, selected users, or groups. Administrators recharge it in the MyQ Web Interface; users recharge it with vouchers, recharging terminals, the mobile app, or a payment provider.

• Quotas: page or cost limits per period, with email warnings, optionally blocking use at the limit. They can run alongside credit.

• Projects: categorize jobs by purpose. Project data is included in scan metadata for use in workflows.

How MyQ counts usage

MyQ accounts for the pages the device reports, not the pages requested.

1. At spooling, the job parser estimates pages and cost.

2. Before release, the estimate is checked against the user's credit or quota.

3. On completion, MyQ records the page count reported by the device, through the embedded terminal or SNMP. Pages not printed because of a cancellation, jam, or error are not accounted.

Copy, scan, fax, and Easy Print operations started at the device are counted the same way.

Click calculation

Click calculation per paper format counts large formats as two clicks by default. Match it to your service contracts (for example, one click in Japan), or MyQ totals will differ from meter billing.

Unauthenticated usage

Jobs that bypass MyQ, such as those sent straight to a device IP address, are still counted from device counters and accounted to *unauthenticated. Include this user in reports when reconciling with vendor invoices, and block direct printing to keep it low.

Planning checklist

Settle these before the terminal rollout.