PaperCut Print Logger: Track All Print Jobs on a PC

Any printer can develop a problem and waste more ink than usual, but paper doesn't usually disappear by magic. If you have doubts about the rational use of a printer, the program PaperCut Print Logger will help you obtain logs with all print orders.

It's somewhat common in certain work environments. Just as employers and employees maintain this tug-of-war over checking personal email or social networks during working hours, there's also the occasional use of the printer for secondary or external tasks. I imagine three or four pages don't cause many problems, but there's always the abusive user who decides to quietly print a 400- or 500-page text.

Windows is somewhat blind to this kind of activity. In fact, it's already difficult to convince the operating system when it chokes on too many jobs in the print queue, so if you want to closely monitor the use of a printer, the most advisable thing is to use a tool like PaperCut Print Logger.

How to Log Print Jobs

Technically, Print Logger does not have a dedicated interface. The program runs as if it were another service within Windows, and when viewing the logs it opens an HTML link in the default browser. This background operation practically eliminates any configuration process. PaperCut Print Logger will automatically detect any new printer installed on the system, and the few low-level options available are in the print-logger.conf file (located in the program's folder), where the user can specify which printers should be ignored by the service.

Among other things, Print Logger records:

• Date and time of printing
• The name of the user who used the printer
• The total number of pages printed
• The names of documents and titles
• Other attributes such as paper size, color, etc.
• If necessary, there is also the possibility to create logs with virtual printers.

PaperCut Print Logger is completely free and compatible with a wide variety of Windows systems, starting with version 2000 (whether Pro or Server). It also offers a significant number of supported languages, including Spanish.

Just to clarify a detail, if the printer is shared on a network, PaperCut Print Logger must be installed on the server that manages it. On the other hand, those who need to centralize logs from several printers connected on different systems must purchase the NG version of the program, which includes other functions such as “print quotas” to limit and ration usage.

Official site and download: