How for free start to monitor what your users print on company printers

Small and free Paper Cut program is very easy to install and start to use to collect information about who, when, from what workstation and how many pages printed. Program works as a service and it seems that program intercepts from spooler service all information for own reports or maybe just parses event log? Surely if you have scripting skills you will get almost the same information for free from EventLog after parsing by script – but this program is easier to setup and configure.

One more recommendation – even for network printers with NIC better to install such printers on one of your Windows servers (becomes printer server), share these printers and list them in AD, on all workstations remove direct drivers to network MFU device and only after this install drivers from above Windows print server as a shared network printer. Doing so you will be able to control and monitor printers, manage (usually all direct network printing is done with full rights, but if you create print server you can start delegate for ordinary users only print rights, but for helpdesk to delegate to manage rights – stop/cancel/pause printing tasks of other users in printer queue), you can now even pool printers for load balancing (like port aggregation for printers :))

If you need to control even content of printed documents (usually all printed docs are in addition to the printing also saved as pdf) there are paid alternatives. For example Printer Activity Monitor

if you need proactively to be notified/alerted about low paper/toner and so on – use prtg by snmp (if your printer MFU supports it)