Patent ID: 7684072

Claim:
A method of providing a level of priority for printing a document in a company having a plurality of departments, comprising: receiving, by a printer system, a print job for printing at least one document; determining, by the printer system, a department from the plurality of departments which sent the print job, and assigning a priority to the print job based on the determined department; after the print job has been printed, determining, by the printer system, a print amount from the determined department during a fixed time interval; lowering, by the printer system, the priority assigned to the determined department if the print amount exceeds a threshold value; and periodically performing, by the printer system, a priority level update for each of the departments, based on the print amount for the corresponding departments during the fixed time interval, the print amount corresponding to either a total number of printed sheets or a total number of print jobs during the fixed time interval, in a case in which the print amount corresponds to the total number of printed sheets during the fixed time interval: determining, by the printer system, a time of day when the print job was printed; and if the print job was printed during a particular time of day, assigning, by the printer system, a positive demand time value of more than one to be multiplied by a print sheet value that corresponds to the total number of printed sheets of the print job, to thereby compute an updated print amount for the print job, to be added to a print sheet value that corresponds to a total number of printed sheets made by respective print jobs of the determined department during the fixed time interval, in a case in which the print amount corresponds to the total number of print jobs during the fixed time interval: if the print job was printed during the particular time of day, assigning, by the printer system, the positive demand time value of more than one that is added to the total number of print jobs previously made by the determined department during the fixed time interval, to obtain an updated total number of print jobs made by the determined department during the fixed time interval.