Refilling a printer
Full and half refills, entering what is really left in the tank, and what leaves your stock.
Refilling is the only action that reduces your ink stock. Printing draws from the tank; the tank draws from the shelf. If you take one thing from this page, take that.
Doing a refill
- 1Open Ink and stay on the Ink Refill tab.
- 2Choose the printer. Its tanks appear with their current levels.
- 3Optionally correct the level — see below.
- 4Press Full or Half on the tank you are filling.
Full tops the tank up to capacity. Half adds half a tank's worth. Both add on top of what is already there rather than replacing it, and neither can overflow — the tank stops at capacity. Two Half refills from empty therefore give you a full tank.
What actually leaves stock
Exactly the millilitres that went in. If a 100 ml tank has 30 ml left and you press Full, 70 ml leaves your ink balance — not 100.
Whole bottles come off the inventory count only when their last millilitre is used. Pouring 70 ml from a 100 ml bottle leaves 30 ml on the books and the bottle still counted. See Partial reams and bottles.
When the tank reading looks wrong
The level PrintERP shows is an estimate: it starts from your last refill and subtracts what jobs have drawn. Estimates drift — a job that was cancelled part-way, a purge, a manual top-up nobody recorded.
Trust your eyes over the estimate
Before refilling, enter the approximate millilitres you can actually see in the tank. PrintERP uses your reading as the starting point instead of its own, so the amount deducted from stock matches what you really poured. Doing this occasionally keeps the estimate honest.
If something is refused
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| “Tank is already full” | Nothing to add. Print something first. |
| Not enough ink in stock | The inventory item is empty. Receive a purchase order or adjust the item. |
| The tank is not listed | The machine has no tank for that colour — add one in Machines. |
Every refill writes an ink-refill entry to Stock Movements, so you can always see when a machine was last filled and how much it took.
Open Ink Refill
Top up a printer's tanks.
Related guides
How ink works
Bottles on the shelf, tanks in the printer, and why only a refill moves your ink stock.
Setting up ink tanks on a printer
Add a tank per colour, set its capacity, and link it to the inventory item that fills it.
Partial reams and bottles
Why a whole unit only comes off the books when its last piece is spent — and what the "is it safe to say" prompt means.