Once set-up, the printing of documents is automatic. However, to help you in the set-up, it is important to appreciate how printing is organised. The printing system is designed to be robust, even in the presence of hardware and printer failures. The native Windows printing system can lose documents if a printer fails at a critical moment. Match-IT will never lose a document like this.

Printing takes place in two phases. The first phase is to prepare the information that is to be printed on the document. During this phase, the relevant parts of the databases are extracted and placed in a special holding area called the report stack. This phase is always performed immediately you do some action that will produce a document. It is done on the station you are working at. The second phase is to actually format and print the document using the information extracted in phase one. This phase is done by the reporter. This is a special function that processes the print requests in the report stack. The reporteris a background task that is run on a nominated station. It is usually not the station you are working on, but instead either a dedicated print station or an infrequently used station. If the reporter is not running, the document will stay in the report stack and will not be printed automatically. In this case you can print them manually.

This two-phase system provides the robustness because the information to be printed will stay in the report stack for, usually, 90 days. So, if the document is lost or mangled by the printer, it can be re-selected from the report stack and printed again.

The separation of the information extraction from its formatting and printing also means that printing is less intrusive. The actual formatting and printing can absorb all the processing power of a station for a significant period of time. This would stop you working on that station. By delegating this task to another station, you can continue working while the printing is being done elsewhere.