This section describes in detail how to set up PaperCut for the most common uses for
multiple personal accounts.
Example 1: Separate Cash/Quota Accounts
In environments where users have both freely allocated quotas and the option for users to
pay for printing it's useful to separate quotas from cash. For a description of this
scenario see the section called “Separating Quota and Cash”.
To configure multiple accounts for this situation:
Navigate to → → .
Enable the Enable multiple personal accounts option.
The "Default" (built-in) account is used for quotas. Rename it to something
appropriates (e.g. "Quotas").
Press the Add Account button to add a new account. This account will
be used for user payments. Name it appropriately, and set the priority to a value higher
than the default/built-in account. i.e. like the screenshot below.
It is important that the accounts are given this priority order. This way any freely
allocated quotas will be used before using the cash payments. This allows a user to add credit
to their account and know that it will only be used when they run out of allocated quota.
Press the Set Up Accounts button to start applying the change.
When the account setup is complete, select the "Cash" account as the account for user payments.
To do this choose this account under the User payment accounts option.
Press the Apply button.
At this point the system is ready to use. Any cash payments from TopUp/Pre-Paid Cards or Payment Gateways are added
to the selected cash account. The quotas will be added to the default/built-in account. (Note:
Site running a Payment Gateway module released prior to version 10.5 may need to upgrade the gateway to
leverage this setting.)
Example 2: Department/Faculty Quotas (Advanced)
A much more advanced configuration is required when different departments/faculties/areas want to each have their
own quotas that are only available for use by their users on their printers. Department quotas are also often
combined with user cash payments which can be used anywhere on site.
For a description of this scenario see the section called “Independently Managed Work Areas”.
One prominent PaperCut customer, Cambridge University in the UK uses this configuration.
At Cambridge each of the independent schools/colleges want to allocate quotas to their students at enrollment.
These quotas may only be used on the printers owned by the school. Cambridge also offers user-paid printing,
and where the cash can be used on any printer across the campus. The multiple personal account
feature in PaperCut has been designed to meet the demanding requirements at The University of Cambridge and other
leading colleges.
This configuration requires the use of many advanced PaperCut features. This section gives a brief outline
of how this is configured.
Enable multiple personal accounts and create the accounts for each of the work-areas or departments required.
If users can also pay for printing, also create a cash account. The priority/order of the quota accounts is not
important, as long as the "Cash" account appears last. The screenshot below shows a possible configuration.
Press the Set Up Accounts button to start applying the change.
When the account setup is complete, select the "Cash" account as the account for user payments.
To do this choose this account under the User payment accounts option.
Then press the Apply button.
At this point all the accounts are enabled and can be used on any printers. To restrict the accounts
that can be used on different printers, the Advanced Printer Scripting feature can be used (see
Chapter 18, Advanced Scripting (Print Scripting)). The advanced scripting provides a method
(actions.job.changePersonalAccountChargePriority) that allows for changing both
the accounts available and their order/priority. The method is documented in detail in
the section called “Script Actions”.
For example, the following script snippet, shows how to limit the available accounts to only
"Science Quotas" and "Cash" (in that order).
actions.job.changePersonalAccountChargePriority(["Science Quotas", "Cash"]);
Departments can allocate initial quotas at enrollment or periodically throughout the year using the
web-service APIs or server-command to adjust user balances. All the balances
affecting APIs/commands have a parameter to specify which of the accounts to adjust/set. For example, to use
server-command to set the balance of the "Science Quotas" account to $10.00 for
all members of the "Science Students" group:
server-command set-user-account-balance-by-group "Science Students" 10.0 \
"Enrollment quota" "Science Quotas"
This technique can be integrated with existing student management systems to automate the allocation of
free print quota at the time of enrollment.
For more information on web-service APIs or server-command see
the section called “The XML Web Services API” and the section called “Server Commands (server-command)”.
With the power of Advanced Print Scripting and Multiple Personal Accounts much can be achieved. Large universities
and colleges needing this level of flexibility also tend to have very competent IT staff. Take some time to bounce
around some ideas. Here are a few:
Use advanced print scripting to tune on/off access to accounts based on conditions such as group
membership, time of day, device, etc.
Automate account management tasks such as free quota assignment on course enrollment using scripts.
Complex rules on which accounts are used and under which conditions, need to be clearly explained to
users. Take some time to document this and communicate policy with staff/students/members.
