calculate print cost

Hi, I’am a newby, sorry for my english ( I’am Italian) and for the ( maybe) obviuos question: I’am searching an accurate way to calculate the prints cost. I’am not very able to write script so maybe some one can tell me if there is a resource allready compiled for this kind of task. I’am working with an Epson 2200 and often clients ask me prints that cost me a lot ( every complete set of 6 ink cost more than 90 €! ) there is any way to calculate the exact cost or the average cost of prints? I’am thinking about a script that every time you hit the print button keep track of tipe of print, size, quality and related at ink consumpion…Thans a lot to gentle soul who will answer me!

Luca :smiley:

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Ciao! I don’t know any Italian, but I can offer some tips. You’ll have to make a custom script.
I assume that your main cost is in ink, not paper? You need to come up with a way to track your ink usage, in my opinion.

You will not be able to track the exact cost of each print- that would be pretty much impossible unless you could find a program that returned that info. By tracking your usage with some statistics, you might be able to get an idea of how much ink you use for a job over time. You will have to put time into logging the data and evaluating it.
The idea is to run this script to print a job. *We need to know which program you print with.

Start with a new ink cartridge, and run the script.

When you print a job, dialogs come up asking you
The client name
Number of pages
Print quality on a scale you rate
Size of print on a scale you rate --you can have the actual font size return a number

The script averages these figures and gives you a “Job Print Rating”, and counts that job.
->Number of jobs on cartridge: 1
Client: James Wade --You can return all your info here, if you want(Pages, font, quality)
Has a job print rating of 8.995

You can keep a list going of all the clients, the print rating (you will decide the importance of each variable as a number value), and how many jobs are on the cartridge. Then when the cartridge is done, you will know how many jobs it did, and how to better “dial in” your “print rating” values.

You can also log this all to a text file to keep track in a document. You would get something like
->Number of jobs on cartridge: 24
Client: Sarah Johnson
Has a job print rating of 16

->Number of jobs on cartridge: 25
Client: Andolini Corlioni
Has a job print rating of 6.85


->Number of jobs on cartridge: 26
Client: Kim Wilson
Has a job print rating of 15.23

Then you would know how many jobs a cartridge does, relative to the job print ratings. The more you dial in the accuracy of the job print rating variables, the better this will work for you.
After going through many ink cartridges and evaluating the print job ratings, if you felt they were accurate enough, you could calculate the “average cost in ink” per job.
I would like to work this out, so if this sounds appealing to you, let me know. Especially about the “log to file” option.
try this:

property NumberOfPages : {"1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10"}
property SizeOfPrint : {"1", "2", "3", "4", "5"}
property QualityofPrint : {"1", "3", "5", "7", "9"}
property ClientList : {}
property JobNumber : {"1"}

set UI1 to display dialog "Nome del cliente:" default answer ""
set Client to text returned of UI1


choose from list NumberOfPages with prompt "Numero di pagine"
set PrintType to result as number


choose from list SizeOfPrint with prompt "Formato di tasso della stampa"
set PrintSize to result as number


choose from list QualityofPrint with prompt "Qualità di tasso della stampa"
set PrintQuality to result as number


set JobPrintRating to (PrintType + PrintSize + PrintQuality) / 3

set LastJob to "Lavori sulla cartuccia: " & JobNumber & return & "Cliente: " & Client & return & "Ha una valutazione di costo di " & JobPrintRating as string


display dialog LastJob as string
set JobNumber to JobNumber + 1

set ClientList to ClientList & return & LastJob as string

set PrintDocument to choose file
tell application "TextEdit"
	print PrintDocument
end tell

SC
Hope the translations aren’t too bad :slight_smile:

Is there a way to run such a script each time the print command is issued, from any application? What I am trying to do is get a script that will track all printing and keep that information in a log. The info I would like logged includes a custom field, like a client number, as well as standard info such as print date, number of copies, page size, etc. There are a few sofware applications out there which do this, but they are fairly expensive and I’m trying to find a less expensive option.

On a sidenote, we also run Tiger Server, which has a print server, but the print server does not have any way that I know of to keep track of a job/client number associated with each print job. Without that feature, a print server is useless for billing purposes!

Thanks in advance for any help.