Targeted at libraries, colleges and universities that need to manage, control and automatically recover their printing costs. Print Release Software provides customers with a solution that enables them to monitor and automatically (through attendantless pay stations) charge for their patrons/students printing. This solution works in any environment including Windows, Novell, Unix and Linux. The software intercepts the print jobs that are submitted by clients connected together through a LAN/WAN connection. Each user’s print job is spooled (spooling is inherent to all Windows, Mac and Unix clients, thus no client software is required) to a designated queue. Thereafter the user, by accessing a Release Station, can select his/her job to be printed and indicate to which printer the job will be printed. The software will calculate the cost of the job, allowing payment to be automatically collected by a number of means without intervention by an attendant. Payment means can include but are not limited to debit cards, cash, smart cards, account billing against a prepaid running balance, and account billing by statements. A detailed log file is written reflecting all jobs that have been printed.