Stock must be set up prior to adding meters, including macro descriptions on the Machines tab.
Example Macros
{{Project.Meter.Counter Name" "}}{{"Last Read - "Project.Meter.Job.Previous Job.Meter Read" "}}{{"Last Estimated Read - "Project.Meter.Job.Previous Job.Estimated Meter Read" "}}{{Project.Meter.Job.Previous Job.Date Due" "}}{{"Current Read - "Project.Meter.Job.Meter Read" "}}{{"Estimated Read - "Project.Meter.Job.Estimated Meter Read" "}}{{"Prints - "Project.Meter.Job.Qty" "}}{{"Estimated Prints - "Project.Meter.Job.Estimated Qty" "}}
Basic Cost per Copy with Estimates
This machine has a black meter and a colour meter. No minimum volume. The machine allows estimates to be calculated against this machine. Unders stock is used to track any estimated billing. The machine had a previous actual black and colour read of 45,000 and 16,000 respectively.
Meter Setup
Opening Balance
If there is a second estimated read of 5,000 black pages and 900 colour pages, that is entered in the Billing Meter Read screen as follows:
This will produce a job similar to the following:
The current meter counts on the machine setup would look similar to:400
If the following month we receive an actual read of 57,000 black and 17,400 colour, and enter it in via the Billing Meter Read screen:
Jim2 will produce a job similar to the following:
Whereby the actual black count is only 3,000 higher than previously estimated, so that is the net number charged to the client. We can see the unders are clawed back, and the actual standard page count is increased. The actual colour read still has not reached the amount previously estimated, so the entire amount for colour has been clawed back.
We can see, looking at the black meter, it no longer has any unders to clawback, and its entire meter is a standard meter count. The colour meter still has 300 unders pages that will be clawed back the next time it is billed.
This allows Jim2 to keep track of actual page counts, even if previous estimated billing reads turned out to be too high.
Further information: