Quotas and Cost Control

OptimiDoc Quotas and Cost Control let you set enforced spending limits on printing and copying, applied to users, groups, departments, devices or tags. Quotas are fully enforced in real time: the estimated cost of every job is checked against the relevant balances before the job reaches the device, and the balance is settled once the job completes. Because quota data lives in a dedicated database, cost enforcement stays isolated from — and never slows down — the operational print and scan tables.

How Quotas Work

A quota defines a limit (an Amount) for a chosen target, together with the rules for how that limit is consumed and when it resets. Balances are tracked per period in a separate quota database and updated through a reserve-and-settle cycle:

• When a job is accepted, OptimiDoc estimates its cost from the applicable price list and reserves that amount against the balance.

• If the remaining balance is insufficient and the quota is a hard quota, the job is blocked before it is released.

• When the job finishes, the reservation is settled — the actual cost is deducted and recorded as a transaction.

Because reservation happens up front, a user cannot exceed a hard limit by submitting several jobs at once. Every movement is written to a transaction log, so the balance is always fully auditable.

1. Choose What the Quota Applies To

Each quota is bound to a single target. The target type determines whose activity is counted:

For Group, Department and Tag targets you can enable Apply to Members, which gives every member of the target its own individual balance rather than sharing one pooled balance across the whole entity.

2. Set the Limit and Balance Mode

The Amount is the balance granted for each period, expressed in the same cost units as your price lists (your organisation's currency). It is consumed by the calculated cost of each job, so a colour A3 page draws down more of the balance than a monochrome A4 page.

The Balance Mode controls what happens at the start of a new period:

• Reset (start fresh) — the balance is reset to the configured Amount each period; anything unused is lost.

• Accumulate (carry over) — the Amount is added to whatever remains, so unused budget rolls forward.

3. Choose a Reset Interval

The Reset Interval aligns the quota with your accounting cycle:

• None — a fixed, one-off balance that never resets (useful for temporary or guest allocations).

• Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly — the balance resets (or accumulates) at the start of each period.

For weekly and monthly intervals you can set the exact reset day (day of week, or day of month) so the cycle matches your internal reporting periods.

4. Hard or Soft Enforcement

Every quota is either Hard or Soft, which decides what happens when the limit is reached:

• Hard — the job is rejected once the balance is exhausted. Use this to impose a firm cap.

• Soft — the limit is advisory; instead of blocking, OptimiDoc applies a Soft Action:

  • Notify Only — allow the job but flag that the limit has been passed.

  • Force Black & White — allow the job but strip colour to contain cost.

  • Force Duplex — allow the job but force double-sided output to save paper.

Soft quotas are ideal when you want to steer behaviour and reduce cost without stopping people from working.

Resolving Multiple Quotas — Overlap Strategies

A single job can fall under several quotas at once (for example a personal quota, a departmental quota and a device quota). A global Overlap Strategy decides how those competing limits are combined:

Balances, Adjustments and Transactions

Administrators manage quotas from the Quotas page and monitor consumption on the Quota History page:

• Each balance shows its initial, used, reserved, adjusted and remaining amounts for the current period.

• Balances can be adjusted manually — for example a mid-period top-up or a correction — with a description that is stored on the transaction.

• Every reservation, settlement and adjustment is recorded as a transaction, with a running balance, so consumption can be traced job by job.

• The Quota History view lets you pick any target entity and review its active quotas and full transaction history.

Price Lists and Cost Calculation

Quotas rely on price lists to convert physical output into a cost that can be debited:

• Price lists define per-page prices for monochrome and colour printing, for different paper formats, and for copies and scans.

• A price list is assigned to a device (or device group), so the cost of a job reflects the actual device it runs on.

• The resulting cost is what draws down the quota balance and what appears in reports.

See Reporting and Analytics for how the same price-list data feeds cost reporting.

In Summary

Quotas turn OptimiDoc from a system that records cost into one that controls it. By combining flexible targets, hard and soft enforcement, configurable reset cycles and clear overlap rules — all settled against a dedicated, auditable quota database — administrators can hold spending to budget without getting in the way of everyday work.