Document output is a pricey business expense, but an accounting/cost control and recovery solution can greatly reduce an organization’s hardcopy expenses. This type of software is designed to help improve productivity and eliminate waste by tracking, managing, monitoring and recording print, copy, fax and scan pages and their associated costs.

There are various types of systems. Accounting and cost-recovery solutions place an emphasis on tracking the printing/copying behavior of individual users or departments so costs can be billed to the correct in-house department or an outside client. Cost-control solutions take that tracking a step further, analyzing the cost of each output job and implementing rules that govern such output, such as enforcing duplex printing to save paper, limiting the number of color pages an individual or department can produce, or prohibiting color printing from certain applications (most often Web browsers). Some cost-recovery solutions cross over into the print re-routing area, offering the ability to send print jobs to a lower-cost device on the network. (Dedicated Output Assessment/Re-Routing solutions have their own category here on BLI Solutions Center.)