We have customers who can’t keep track of prints, but have a print budget set up for their employees, like schools, or need to bill their clients for prints made, like law offices. Cost Recovery Software with brands like PaperCut and TechSource 360 are set up to help with this. Commonly confused with Management Print Services, cost recovery software is made to help a client manage their document output and their end users; whereas, managed print services is a service provided by a vendor who manages the entire document output fleet, including multifunctional devices and printers. We have found that cost recovery software is easy for our customers to install, use, and manage from the system administrators to the financial administrators. Here are the benefits cost recovery software can provide for your business:
1. Control Costs.
With cost recovery software you can track and allocate costs back to the department or client. If you are in an industry where you bill clients often based on time spent on their accounts, like law offices do, you can bill/charge for every copy, print, scan, and fax. In turn this gives you the ability to improve your workflow because you’re not spending endless hours calculating time spent on accounts yourself, which can lead to errors and money lost.
2. Manage Copiers.
When you’re using a cost recovery software and you put print policies in place for your departments, you’re cutting paper waste and lowering toner costs and power usage. Studies have shown the impact this has made on carbon emissions and our carbon footprint. Aside from the green initiative cost recovery software supports, cost recovery software, like PaperCut’s, provides admin access from any network location and configuring options in an intuitive user interface. Also, end users have access to a set of web tools to track their own activity in real-time, query their account balances, view transactions, and transfer credit to other users.
3. Report Usage.
Admins on the software will get real-time monitoring and reports of all areas of print/copy/fax/scan management, ranging from detailed pages’ logs to summaries by user, department, device or environmental impacts. Out of the box, PaperCut provides more than 50 reports in several different types of format. You have access to reports from any web browser or you can schedule them to be automatically generated and emailed. These reports can be personalized to include your own header, custom data by specifying date ranges, filtering, and sorting by the data available.
4. Access Devices.
You can increase accessibility with logins, account codes, or ID/access cards anywhere you are. PaperCut offers a feature that allows users to print wirelessly from laptops and netbooks with no driver installations or server authentication. An installation wizard installs server software and then proceeds to automatically detect printers and multi-function devices on your network. It will help you define user access rights, page costs, and quotas. Client software is optional and can be run directly off a server share avoiding the need to install /deploy locally.
5. Enforce.
With all the benefits of cost recovery software, you will want your employees to feel encouraged to use the software. You can set rules, limits, and auto-notifications on the end user level. And the end users will be able to have access to a set of web tools to track their activity in real-time query, their account balances, view transactions, and transfer credit to other users.
6. Secure.
With how accessible cost recovery software is, security is a concern. However, cost recovery software, like PaperCut, protects confidential documents and stashes the volume of unclaimed printouts by ensuring users release print jobs at the point of printing. With PaperCut’s Find-Me printing, users queue print jobs to a virtual queue, and then release them for printing, ensuring that only authorized users can print and collect sensitive documents. PaperCut can also be configured to require print approval from managers, teachers, or system administrators. For additional security, you have the ability to watermark every print by automatically adding a username at the bottom of every page or a digital signature to track document origin/source. In addition, TechSource 360 has partnered with an internationally recognized cybersecurity and intelligence firm. When looking for your cost recovery software, make sure security is something the company you choose puts in high regard.
