Ricoh Launches Economic Application for Its MFPs

Ricoh Americas announced April 17 that it has released its Smart Accounting software, a cost-accounting offering that allows small and medium-sized businesses to track usage of their Ricoh multifunctional products or user-codes-configured printer.

Smart accounting, a PC-based application, tracks MFP-related activities such as copy, print, fax and scan in a shared PC environment while also providing SMBs with a low-cost reporting tool. The accounting application from Ricoh also enables employees to choose options as they normally would in the print driver window so when they click the print option, they are prompted to enter their user code as the document is released for output.

"Smart Accounting provides small-to-medium size businesses what they have needed, a low-cost, robust document output solution," Hede Nonaka, senior vice present of Document Solutions & Services (DSS) Division at the West Caldwell, N.J.-based Ricoh Americas, said in a company statement.

The user code feature allows businesses to select printers that enable businesses with 50 devices or less to record usage and create detailed reports for tracking or user bill-back, which helps SMBs such as real estate or insurance agencies where brokers are required to keep track of their document output.

"The product is designed for small businesses that want to track and/or bill back for usage so a real estate broker looking to offer color output in their office but wanting to bill-back to their agents, would be a good example," Craig Temple, Document Solutions product manager for the DSS Division at Ricoh, told eWEEK.

The PC-based application provides users with printing job details such as paper size and page count while also assigning print jobs to individual user codes. With Smart accounting, users are also able to establish separate page prices for black and white and color output or for letter- or legal-size paper while also having the ability to differentiate between black and white and color pages within the same print job.

The new economical application from Ricoh includes departmental recording capabilities that enable businesses to track group as well as individual usage and costs.

"Smart Accounting will enable clients to reduce administrative expenses, increase productivity and gain a competitive advantage in their respective marketplace," Nonaka said in the same statement.

Smart Accounting is available now for $999.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International