US Patent 7948644 Print job cost estimate method and system

Automatically determining the cost of a printed job on a digital printing press before the job is run. A job control component in the digital front end of the printing press collects and stores the processing information from the job processing components from prior runs. A job-reporting component displays the stored and estimated processing information and automatically computes and displays the estimated cost of the job. The method includes determining a future toner cost using a toner cost, a future press usage cost, and a substrate cost based on historical toner consumption and then rasterizing the job to determine the total job cost.