One useful feature among some Toshiba printers is its ability to internally track how many pages printed and by whom, and to associate the cost of printing to a specific accounting code. This feature currently is available within the eStudio 520/600/720/850 family of printers.

The benefit of the feature is that one user may have a single account code, and the cost associated with printing from that single user could be rendered from the printer's memory. Likewise, all the employees from a single department could share the same account code, rendering the cost expended from the department as a whole.

The systems administrator would follow the tasks outlined next to configure accounting codes. He or she should be implement the changes to user profiles.

The first step in configuring the eStudio 520/600/720/850 family of printers to capture the accounting code, and tallying page counts is to change each System i User Profile with an accounting code representative with the cost center. The User Profile actually has a property associated with it named account code. This is the value that needs to be updated.

The command WRKUSRPRF *ALL will profile the interface to maintain the profiles.

The next step is to take option 30, Work with iDriver accounting code. From the screen below the administrator can enter in the accounting code, and the associated printer out queue. In this way, the print stream is embbeded with the users account code if the destination out queue is listed within the table below. Do not enter in an out queue that is associated with a printer that is anything other than an eStudio 520/600/720/850.

   5/28/07                       Toshiba iDriver                       IDACCDC2  
 18:32:44          Accounting Code and Out Queue Maintenance          QSECOFR   
                                                                                
                                                                                
 User Account      Destination  Destination                                     
 Code              Library      Queue        Description                        
 1234              QGPL         SAMPLE       User Profile's Account in stream  

The last step, is to enable the cost accounting using a software configuration value. This is enabled through option 31, Work with iDriver Configuration.

  5/28/07                     Toshiba iDriver 2.50                  IDDCFG      
 20:18:48                Global Configuration Settings              QSECOFR     
                                                                                
 Description                                                        Value       
                                                                                
 Enable eStudio 520/600/720/850                                                 
 Access Code retrival from user profile  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N           
                              
                                                                                

To enable this feature, change the value listed above from N to Y.

The next step is to assign a department code to each IBM i user profile. The system administrator can accomplish this task using the following command:

CHGUSRPRF USRPRF(ITUSRPRF) ACGCDE('IT-DEPARTMENT')

In this example, ITUSRPRF contains the IBM i user profile. The accounting code, 'IT-DEPARTMENT' represents the value that will be associated with the cost accounting code.

This command will need to be repeated for all user profiles within easch cost accounting group needing to be tracked.

That completes the cost accounting configuration for the Toshiba eStudio printers.