Description:

Printbill calculates the amount of ink/toner and the number of pages
used when printing a document. It uses ghostscript to convert
postscript files into PNG bitmaps, then calls percentblack or
percentcolour to determine the percentage coverage. Prices may be
independently determined for for each printer, with set rates for
black and colour ink/toner and per-page. Bill calculation is quite CPU
intensive so printbill allows multiple concurrent billing processes to
be executed - jobs may not be printed in the order in which they are
sent to the queue. On SMP systems printbill will happily make use of
all processors if so instructed.

Users pre-pay a quota and this is automatically decremented as they
print - alternatively one may just do per-user and per-printer
accounting with no billing. Various mechanisms exist for generating a
quote. Printbill also keeps detailed statistics on printing habits
which may be of interest to administrators. The system may be managed
via either a command-line application or via a convenient web
interface (for non-tech people).