US Patent 7148986 System and method for tracking print system utilization

Disclosed are systems and methods for tracking a user's utilization of print resources. In one embodiment, the system and method pertain to collecting data about a print job from devices in a print pipeline, and storing the data in a central database. In some embodiments, data about the print job is sent to a print accounting service by the devices in the pipeline. In other embodiments, data is obtained by a print accounting service by polling the devices in the pipeline.