Patent ID: 7487048

Claim:
A conveying apparatus comprising: a conveying mechanism that conveys a recording medium; and a controller that monitors a state of conveyance of the recording medium by the conveying mechanism, determines a maintenance level indicating a level of maintenance required to normalize a conveying function of the conveying mechanism for conveying the recording medium, and provides a notification that the conveying function should be normalized by providing maintenance at the determined maintenance level, wherein the controller further determines whether or not a conveyance of the recording medium by the conveying mechanism has been performed normally, counts a number of errors indicating a number of determinations that the conveyance has not been performed, and determines one maintenance level of different maintenance levels depending on the monitored number of errors, and wherein the controller counts an accumulated number of errors indicating an accumulated number of determinations that the conveyance has not been performed normally until a point in time, and determines that the maintenance level is a first error level when the monitored accumulated number of errors is smaller than a predetermined accumulated threshold, while determining that the maintenance level is a second error level requiring more major maintenance than in the first error level when the monitored accumulated number of errors reaches or exceeds the predetermined accumulated threshold.