Patent ID: 7685035

Claim:
A network system for determining billing fee usage information for document processing related jobs, comprising: a plurality of processing apparatuses having document processing functions, each processing apparatus belonging to one of a plurality of groups; a plurality of client apparatuses configured to instruct each of the processing apparatuses to execute a necessary document processing related job, each client apparatus belonging to one of the plurality of groups; and a server apparatus, all of said plurality of processing apparatuses and all of said plurality of client apparatuses being mutually connected on a network, wherein said server apparatus comprises a collection recorder that collects, from each of said plurality of processing apparatuses, information about a document processing related job executed by each of said processing apparatuses and records the information as job data, and a count processor that executes a count process according to a count condition specified by each of said plurality of client apparatuses, based on the job data, wherein a browser is installed to each client apparatus of the plurality of client apparatuses in order to specify the count condition, instruct an execution of the count process, and view a count result generated by the count processor, wherein, when performing a remote process where a certain document processing related job executed by using one of the plurality of processing apparatuses within a group different from a normal group to which a client apparatus belongs, the count processor of said server apparatus executes the count process by incorporating billing fee usage information of the document processing related job into the normal group, and wherein the normal group is a group where a processing apparatus that executes a document processing related job and a client apparatus that instructs the processing apparatus to execute the document processing related job are included in the same group.