Setting Up Printer Monitoring

Overview

Printer monitoring gives you toner levels, page counts and status across a managed fleet. It needs one thing in place first: a Plenix agent running on a machine on the same network as the printers. The agent polls each printer over SNMP and reports back — there is no separate gateway product to install.

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Step 1 — Install an agent on the printers' network

1. Go to RMM → Fleet View and click Generate Installer.
2. Run the installer on a Windows machine on the same subnet as the printers. Pick something that stays on — a server or an always-on workstation. While the agent is offline, printer data stops updating.
3. The device appears in Fleet View within a couple of minutes.

The agent needs UDP port 161 open to the printers, and outbound HTTPS to Plenix.

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Step 2 — Claim the discovered printers

The agent scans for SNMP-capable printers and posts what it finds.

1. Go to Monitoring → Printers and open the Discovered tab.
2. Each entry shows the manufacturer, model, serial and IP the agent read off the device.
3. Click Claim to turn it into a managed printer. You can set the name and the CRM company it belongs to as you claim it.

Claimed printers move to the Managed tab and start collecting readings.

Adding one by hand

If a printer is not discovered — SNMP disabled, or on a different subnet — click Add Printer and enter Name, Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number, IP Address, MAC Address and Location. Only the name is required.

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Step 3 — Read the fleet

Monitoring → Printers shows counts for Online, Discovered, Managed and Offline, with the managed list underneath. Open any printer for:

• Overview — details, toner levels per cartridge, and page counts
• Usage — page-count history over time
• Fulfillments — toner orders raised for this printer

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Step 4 — Cost-per-print billing (Plenix-managed)

Billing rates are configured by Plenix on your behalf, not from the tenant screens. A printer's billing configuration can include mono and colour price per page, scan price per page, a fixed device fee, a network support fee, and a minimum monthly charge, on a contract start date and billing frequency you agree.

This matters beyond invoicing: automatic toner ordering only runs on printers that are on cost-per-print billing. Without it, toner levels are still reported and still visible — nothing is ordered for you.

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Step 5 — Monthly invoicing

Once a printer is on cost-per-print billing, you don't have to remember to bill for it. On the 1st of each month, Plenix bills the whole of the previous month automatically: it totals every managed printer's page-count usage by the CRM company it belongs to, and creates one draft invoice per company with one line item per printer. A company with no chargeable usage that month simply gets no invoice — you'll never see a £0 line.

The invoice is always created as a draft, never sent automatically. Review it in Accounting → Invoices and send it when you're happy with it.

If you don't want to wait for the 1st, click Bill Last Month on Monitoring → Printers to run the same billing pass on demand — it produces the identical result, so running it manually and letting the schedule run are never in conflict with each other, and running it twice for the same month does nothing the second time. If there's nothing to bill, the page tells you that directly rather than creating an empty invoice.

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Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Nothing in Discovered	No agent on that network, or agent offline	Check the device in RMM → Fleet View
Printer never discovered	SNMP disabled on the printer	Enable SNMP in the printer's web admin
Toner shows as unknown	Printer does not expose the standard SNMP counters	Add it manually and track page counts only
Readings stopped	Printer IP changed	Give the printer a DHCP reservation or static IP
No invoice appeared for a printer	It isn't on cost-per-print billing, or had zero chargeable usage that month	Confirm billing is configured (Step 4); zero-usage periods are skipped by design

Where to go next

• Monitor Toner Levels
• View Page Counts
• Fleet Overview
• Install the Gateway Agent