Classroom and Lab Computing

Print Charging via LionCash+

Revision 1.0 10/15/07, 1.1 5/16/08

This page is an overview of the change from billing students for printing in the ITS Student Labs via the bursar's student bill to a system where pages are purchased in advance with the LionCash+ account.   This changeover was made the week before the beginning of Summer 2008 semester, May 12, 2008.

Existing System

The existing print charging system works as follows:

• each student is given a standard allocation of 110 pages each semester;
• in order to print more than that, they must agree to be billed for printing via a Signature Station;
• some time after the billing agreement is made, the student may print almost unlimited numbers of pages (some per-day limits are in effect);
• print job information is processed nightly, and periodically billing records are sent to the bursar;
• eventually the bursar will notify the student when the balance on their bill is large enough that it has to be paid.

Problems with the system include:

• often students are unaware they cannot print more than the subsidized number of pages without agreeing for billing;
• it may take up to an hour, or at certain times late at night, several hours, for the information from a signature station to filter through to allow additional printing;
• once billing has been agreed to, printing is limited to 1000 pages per day, and some students don't pay attention to how much they have printed;
• printing charges placed on the student bill, often seen much longer after the printing, are often a surprise to the bill payer;
• additional allocations of subsidized pages from units has been a manual process that could not be expanded;
• the system is difficult to expand to additional units and campuses.

New System

The new system still provides for 110 subsidized pages to each student each semester, now called the "semester allocation", but to print more than that, students must buy pages via a secure web site which will debit their LionCash+ account.  Deposits to that account can be made a number of ways; see LionCash+ for details.

Advantages of the system include:

• additional pages can be purchased any time and in any amount (as long as the LionCash+ has funds to cover the purchase);
• the pages can be used immediately, so the student doesn't have to look for a signature station, agree for billing, and wait for the information to be propagated;
• the student can't print more pages than they have purchased, so there are no surprise charges later;
• accidental large print jobs won't print unless a large number or pages have been purchased;
• students will have a better idea of how much printing they have done and what it costs;
• faculty and staff can be charged for printing;
• units can give a "unit allocation" to any number of users at any time.

When a print job is rejected because the user doesn't have enough pages, a pop-up message will include a link to the web page where more pages can be purchased.   There the user simply enters a number of pages and click a button to buy more pages.   You may try it but just don't click the "Buy" button after the "Confrim", and you will get an idea how it works without actually buying pages.  Users may opt to buy just enough pages for that job or the day, or buy several hundred to last a while.   Pages may be "returned" for credit to the LionCash+ account once a semester.   Purchased unused pages are retained until the user leaves the University.

Of course, the main disadvantage to current users is that some funds need to be used prior to printing, while in the old system payment could often be much later after the printing was done.   However, the LionCash+ can easily be recharged with a credit card, in which case payment is somewhat delayed.

No Changes

There are no changes in the policy for credits for bad or missing print jobs; users will still fill out the same form, and staff will review the request and correlate it with a print job.  The number of pages credited with be added to the "page wallet".

The subsidized 110 pages per semester remains the same; that is refreshed at the beginning of each semester; unused "free" pages cannot be carried over from one semester to the next (purchased pages are retained while the user account is active).   At the beginning of a semester, when a new supply of subsidized pages is granted, those are used before any purchased pages that were carried over.

In a couple of special cases, students have been granted extra pages by their college (where that cost was recovered from a fee or higher tuition).   To accommodate this, an additional page count representing pages allocated by the sponsoring unit, is maintained.  This will be zeroed-out at the end of the semester.