Pcounter for Windows Install and Configure

guide
for Educational Environments
For Pcounter for Windows version 2.55 and above

About this document

This document details how to install and setup Pcounter for Windows and outlines the
features which are typically used in an educational environment such as a school or
college. Detailed discussions of the various features and configuration of some of the
other optional features are not within the scope of this document. See Appendix: Further
Reading for other resource giving more specific information regarding the features of the
software.

Pcounter for Windows installs as a 60 day fully functional free trial.

Contents

Section 1: Installation

1. Installation Page 2

2. Pcontrol Configuration Page 3

3. Migrating Printers to Pcounter Page 6

4. Priming the Report Generator Page 7

Section 2: Recommended Configuration

1. Quotas Page 8

2. Configuring Printers Page 10

3. Pcounter Client Page 12

Appendix: Further Reading Page 17

1. Installation

Pcounter for Windows can be downloaded from our website at

http://www.ait.co.uk/downloads/print-copy-management. This will download a zip file
containing a number of files.

Run the setup.exe file (double-click) on your Print Server. The setup will take you
through the following process. Simply click Next to all prompts leaving the default
values.
The core Pcounter application will now be installed.

All Pcounter applications and files will be housed in C:\Program Files\Pcounter for NT\.
Shortcuts to relevant applications and files will be in Start > Programs > Pcounter for
Windows. Browse here and open Pcontrol.

2. Pcontrol Configuration

Pcontrol is the utility which allows you to manage your settings associated with your
print queues.

Expand the Quick Server List in the left-hand pane. The only device present should be
the local server. Select this and click the Pcounter button on the tool bar. Confirm the
following request to modify the registry and check the box “Don’t ask this again”.

Once the registry change has been made, Pcontrol will close automatically. Re-open the
application, and select the server and click the Pcounter button again. This will open up
the Server Configuration screen on the Global Settings tab.

2.1 GLOBAL SETTINGS

Recommended settings here are:

 Numerical format for prices/costs set to Currency

 Maximum job move rules set to 2
 Check Log Rejected Jobs

2.2 SERVICES/PORTS

Now select Services/Ports from the left menu

3 4
 2 4

Install the Services and Port in the following order:

Install the Pcounter Port (1)

Install the Pcounter Data Service (2). This will prompt you to create the Pcounter
Share. The default location for this is C:\PCOUNTER. You may change this if
necessary, then click Create Share to complete.

Install the Pcounter Printer Control Service (3)

When the services are installed the Stop buttons will become Start buttons. Start both
services (4). Please note: the order in which
these are started is unimportant.

Once complete, both services and the port should

all be pictured in green.
2.3 DATA SERVER SETTINGS

Select Data Server from the left menu.

Recommended settings here are:

 Send account balance notification message set to If balance reaches low

balance limit
 Create new log and rename old log set to Every month

Also confirm that Data Server contains the name of the local server.
3. Migrating Printers to Pcounter

Select Printers from the left hand menu, then select View non-Pcounter Printers
from the View Printers menu. Displayed in the list box will be all print queues installed
on the server.

Using [Ctrl] or [Shift] + click, select all printers which you want to migrate over to
Pcounter then Select Port Management > IP Port Migrator.

All selected printers will be listed. Click Migrate all ports to begin the migration. This
may take a few minutes depending on the number of printers selected and whether the
printers are powered on at the time. Printers which are not powered on will take a little
longer to migrate.

When complete click Close then OK to close the Global Settings.

Basic configuration is now complete. Send a test print to one of the migrated printers
and ensure that it prints successfully.

4. Priming the Pcounter Report Generator

In order to report on your print usage, the Report Generator needs to be primed. To
do this, ensure that a test print has been sent since completing the installation then
open Pcounter Administrator from Start > Programs > Pcounter for Windows.

Select Reports from the toolbar. It will open on the Summary Reports tab. Click the
Generate button. A report will be reduced showing the details of the test print, and any
other jobs which have been printed since installation.

Basic installation of Pcounter for Windows is now complete.

The rest of this document explains the recommended configuration for an

educational environment. These settings are what we would find in a typical
school or college, however they are entirely optional and do not necessarily
need to be followed. Usage of the different Pcounter for Windows features is
entirely down to the individual customer.
Section 2: Recommended Configuration
1. Quotas

In an educational environment it is recommended to grant Quotas (“Credit”) to your

students so that they are restricted in how much they can print. Staff members would
typically be allowed Unlimited Credit.

1.1 QUOTAS FOR STAFF

In order to set Staff member’s credit to Unlimited:

 In Pcounter Administrator right-click either the OU containing all of the staff

members or the staff AD Security group.
 Select Set low balance limit from the popup-menu
 Check Allow unlimited credit
 Click OK and confirm the message

Please note: If your staff accounts are contained in multiple OUs, you will need to
perform the above operation on each individual OU. There is currently no method to
apply this operation to child OUs.

This setting allows a user to print without restriction in terms of balances. Users with
unlimited credit will still be subject to any Pcounter Rules which have been applied to
individual printers. Their Low balance limit in Pcounter Administrator will now read
Unlimited.

Please note: The Unlimited credit setting may result in a user’s balance going negative.
This will not restrict them from printing.

1.2 QUOTAS FOR STUDENTS

Student users typically are granted an amount of credit. The specific amount granted is
down to the organisation. Factors to consider when determining how much credit to
grant users include:

 The cost per page (colour and mono)

 How many sheets you wish them to be able to print
 How often you intend to top-up their credit
 Do you wish to give different credit amounts to different year groups?
Once you have determined how much credit you wish to grant your students:

 In Pcounter Administrator right-click the relevant OU or AD Security group for

your students or specific group of students
 Select Set balance from the popup menu
 On the Set balance window
 Change Value to modify to Free quota
 Enter the amount into Enter new balance
 Enter an optional comment into Enter comment
 If you wish the transaction to affect all child OUs of this OU check the box
Recurse child OUs
 Click OK once complete

Repeat the above steps for each group of students you wish to have a distinct balance.

Please note: We have entered this credit into the students’ Free Quota field, as
opposed to their Balance field. The purpose of the two separate fields is to differentiate
between credit which has been granted to the user for free by the organisation, and
credit which they have paid for themselves. As we are giving this credit without receiving
cash in return it has gone into the free quota field.

The cost of print jobs will be deducted from the users’ free quota every time they print.
When this reaches 0 they will no longer be able to print and will need their free quota or
their balance fields topping up by an Administrator.

1.3 AUTOMATED CREDIT TOP-UPS FOR STUDENTS (OPTIONAL)

Optionally, Pcounter can be configured to re-credit students at regular intervals.

To setup an automated transaction, perform a Set balance as described in 1.2 above,

and using the Schedule control, choose the weekday or day/time of the month you wish
the transaction to take place.

Please note: This will create a task in the Windows Task Scheduler. The service
must be running, and you must have permission to create the task.

Please note: If you wish the automated balance transaction to be performed at

intervals not available from the drop-down box (e.g. every term), it is possible to
manually edit the scheduled task through the Windows Task Scheduler.
2. Configuring Printers

Each printer must be configured to deduct the cost of a job from a users’ balance, and
must be set with prices for the various paper sizes.

These settings can be applied to each individual printer or to the Default Printer
Configuration template.

To apply to an individual printer, select the printer in the device list in Pcontrol and
hit the Pcounter button.

To apply to the default template select the Server from the device list in Pcontrol and
hit the Pcounter button. The Default printer configuration template is the
uppermost hyperlink on the Global Settings tab.

2.1 SETTINGS

On the Settings tab ensure that the following options are set:

 Accounting must be set to User account balances and log file

 With this option set the cost of a job will be deducted from a users’ balance
 Action if below low balance limit should be set to Delete job
 If a user attempts to print a job which they cannot afford the job will be
deleted
 Allow use of free quota should be checked
 Users will be charged from their free quota wallet first, moving onto their
balance if they have 0 free quota
 Delete duplicate jobs should be checked
 Automatically deletes jobs where the owner, document name and byte size
match other recently printed documents
2.2 PRICES

Select the Prices tab.

Firstly, if this is a colour printer, Colour Detection must be enabled. To do this, click
the Enable colour detection hyperlink in the bottom-right corner of the window. The
yellow (colour) price controls will become active.

Please note: Enabling colour detection on a mono printer will cause no problems,
however not enabling it on a colour device will result in all jobs being recorded as mono.
Consequently, if applying these settings to the default printer configuration
template it is recommended to enable colour detection.

Uncheck all paper sizes which you do not want to be printed from this printer. Any jobs
sent on an unchecked size will be deleted without printing.

Please note: Letter is the US equivalent of A4 paper. Consequently certain applications

may detect A4 as Letter. It is recommended to allow Letter on all printers due to this,
and to match prices with A4.

Using the associated mono and colour controls, set a price per page for each paper
size. The above image shows example prices, however it is strongly recommended that
an organisation enter their own prices based on the cost of printing to them.

Please note: The lowest value for which Pcounter can account is £0.01 (1 penny). The
ability to account for £0.0001 is a highly requested feature and is coming in a future
release of Pcounter for Windows.

Set the Colour feature multiplier to 1.00.

It is also recommended to set a Duplex feature multiplier of between 0.50 and

1.00, such as 0.75. Having a duplex multiplier within this range results in an overall
discount for users printing in duplex, accounting for the fact the paper usage will have
halved but the toner usage will remain the same as if they printed in simplex. For
example:

With an A4 cost of £0.05 and a duplex multiplier of 0.75 a two-page duplex job would be
charged at (2 x 0.05) x 0.75 = £0.075 (rounded up to £0.08). With no duplex multiplier
the overall cost would be 2 x 0.05 = £0.10.

2.3 REAPPLYING THE DEFAULT TEMPLATE (OPTIONAL)

If you have applied these settings to the default printer configuration template the
template will need to be manually re-applied to the relevant printers. To do this:

 In Pcontrol, open the Server configuration and select Printers

 Select all the printers to which you wish to apply the default template using
[Ctrl] or [Shift] + click.
 Select Reset to default configuration from the Pcounter Configuration
menu

3. Pcounter Client

Pcounter Client is a utility application which runs locally on a user’s workstation and
can be configured to ask a user for confirmation before printing a job, or alternatively to
ask a user to select a department code before printing.

It is possible to run different configurations for different groups of users. Typically we

would recommend Staff select a department code, and Students see a simple
confirmation message.
3.1 CREATING PCOUNTER CLIENT PROFILES

In Pcontrol, open the server configuration and select the Popup option from the left
menu.

Using the Add button on the right, add two new profiles. The names New Profile 1 and
New Profile 2 will be added to the list-box. Left-click them and rename one to Staff
and one to Students.

3.1.1 STAFF PROFILE

Select the Staff profile. Ensure the following options are set:

 Set the Window Type to Client code list

 Set Information message type to All printers
 Window title and Prompt are optional messages displayed to the user on the
popup
 Client code only from list should be checked. This disables the free type option
so that the user cannot enter their own code and must choose from the list.
 Remember previous selections should be checked.

Click Apply once complete.

3.1.2 STUDENT PROFILE

Select the Student profile. Ensure the following options are set.

 Set Window Type to Confirmation

 Set Information message type to All printers
 Window title is optional

Click Apply once complete.

3.1.3 INFORMATION MESSAGE

The message which is displayed to the user

needs to be set on both profiles.

Please note: This message needs to be set

separately on both profiles. Consequently
both profiles can have different messages if
you so choose.

To set the message, click the Edit

information message link. The adjacent
window will be loaded.

Set a customised message. There are

optional substitutions possible for
variables such as username, printer etc…
these are explained at the top of the window.
Click OK when done, and repeat the process for your other profile.
3.2 POPULATING THE CLIENT (DEPARTMENTAL) CODE DATABASE

The list of departments from which a staff member can select when printing needs to be
created using Pcounter Administrator. Select the Client codes button at the bottom
of the application.

To create a new code, simply right-click in the left

hand frame and select New code from the popup
menu.

Enter the code into the Code text box and an

optional description into the Description text
box. Hit OK to enter the code and keep the window
open to allow easy entry of multiple codes. Click
Close when complete.

Please note: It is possible to restrict which codes users see so that they can only print
to codes which they have permission to. For further info on this see section Section B4 in
our Pcounter Popup and Client Codes User Manual.

3.3 ENABLING PCOUNTER CLIENT ON PRINTERS

The printers must be configured to use

Pcounter Client. As in Section 2 this setting
can be applied to each printer individually
or to the Global printer configuration
template.

To enable Pcounter Client, check the box

Enable popup, print release etc. (Jobs
are paused). This will automatically
enable the other necessary options for
Pcounter Client: Superpause and Count
jobs in advance for display. Click OK
when complete and confirm when
prompted to restart the Pcounter Printer Control Service.
Please note: If you have applied this setting to the default printer configuration
template you will need to reapply the template to the relevant printers as per Section
2.3.

3.4 LOADING PCOUNTER CLIENT ON USER WORKSTATIONS

PcounterClient.exe is installed on the server in the default location C:\Program

Files\Pcounter for NT\NT\Client\

There are 2 recommended methods of loading PcounterClient on a client machine:

 Add PcounterClient.exe to the user’s Startup folder

 Include the following command in the user’s login script:
 START DRIVE:PATH\PcounterClient [/options]

Please note: If you are using separate staff and student profiles for PcounterClient as
suggested in Section 3.1 you will need to use the /profile=profileName option, e.g.:

 START DRIVE:PATH\PcounterClient /profile=Staff

Other useful options, such as the No Exit option, are detailed in the Appendix of our
Pcounter Popup and Client Codes User Manual.

It is recommended to copy PcounterClient.exe to a shared network folder and push out

from there via one of the two above methods.
Appendix: Further Reading

www.ait.co.uk has a large amount of resource to help you configure and get the most
out of Pcounter. Particularly useful are:

Detailed instructions on the usage of Pcounter Administrator

Detailed instructions on the usage of the Pcounter Report Generator

Detailed instructions on the usage of Pcounter Popup and the associated topics of Client
Codes and Pcounter Users

All other resources can be found on the following pages:

http://www.ait.co.uk/support/print-copy-management/how-to-guides
http://www.ait.co.uk/support/print-copy-management/installation-guides

If you have any questions to which you cannot find the answer please don’t hesitate to
contact Altman Technologies Support:

0113 273 0300

support@ait.co.uk
http://www.ait.co.uk/log-a-case