Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that enables charging management, a control method therefor, and a storage medium storing a control program therefor.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is a known system that issues a job ticket using a server and charges a user listed in the job ticket, as a system for authenticating a user and charging to the user when printed (for example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-316458 (JP 2003-316458A)).
In this case, it is necessary to request issue of a job ticket from a server, to permit issue of a job from a server, and to prepare a conversion table of a user ID and a charging destination account for the check to a server.
Moreover, there are the various print methods, such as a local print from a smart phone, and a tablet terminal and a cloud print connecting to a cloud server, in recent years. On the other hand, an image forming apparatus that prints supports protocols of those print methods.
When a format of user information used in a print protocol or a format of a job ticket is not supported by an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus may not authenticate and charge, in the system that supports a plurality of print protocols and charges when a user is authenticated and prints.
When there is a print protocol that can support neither authentication nor charging in this way, the image forming apparatus prohibits execution of all jobs including jobs with supported print protocols, or treats a job with an unsupported protocol as an undefined user's job.