US Patent 7835019 Image forming apparatus and authentication and charging method

An image forming apparatus having a hardware resource used in image forming processing and an application executing the image forming processing, and performing authentication relating to the execution of the image forming processing is disclosed. The image forming apparatus includes a character string display part and a type character string display part. The character string display part displays a character string that does not include the type of the image forming processing, and prompts the authentication. The type character string display part displays the type of the image forming processing.