Patent ID: 7327479

Claim:
An information management device for a printing apparatus, said information management device receiving expendable consumption information regarding an expendable consumed by multiple printing apparatuses to manage a consumption status of the expendable in the multiple printing apparatuses, the multiple printing apparatuses being located at different places and being capable of receiving a print job and of transferring the received print job via a communication line for execution, said information management device comprising: a job information storage module that receives and stores job reception information regarding reception of print jobs by the multiple printing apparatuses, job execution information regarding execution of print jobs by the multiple printing apparatuses, and job details information regarding details of the print jobs received by the multiple printing apparatuses; a profit distribution calculation module that calculates a reception-side profit distribution as a division of a profit produced by execution of each print job to an administrator of a printing apparatus receiving the print job and an execution-side profit distribution as a division of the profit to an administrator of a printing apparatus executing the print job at a preset profit ratio, based on the job reception information, the job execution information, and the job details information; and a profit distribution notification module that notifies each corresponding printing apparatus of the calculated reception-side profit distribution and the calculated execution-side profit distribution.