A printing apparatus includes white and gray text determination units and a setting unit to charge a color printing fee where a pixel for which a color printing flag is set is present in an input image, and to charge a black-and-white printing fee where a pixel for which the color printing flag is set is not present in an input image. The white determination unit determines whether a focused pixel in the input image is a white pixel. The gray text determination unit determines whether the focused pixel constitutes a gray text. Where the focused pixel is determined to constitute a gray text or be a white pixel, the setting unit sets a black-and-white printing flag for the focused pixel and, where the focused pixel is determined to neither constitute a gray text nor be a white pixel, the color printing flag is set for the focused pixel.

A computerized system for preserving and managing an audit trail associated with printing of a sensitive document, the system including: a printing device disposed on a local area network; a network-connected appliance disposed on the local area network and communicatively coupled to the printing device, the network-connected appliance configured to receive a request from a client system for printing of the sensitive document, to log information related to the received printing request and to release the sensitive document to the printing device for printing; and a server disposed outside of the local area network and configured to receive from the network-connected appliance the logged information related to the printing request and to aggregate and store the logged information on a storage device for subsequent search and retrieval. The computerized system additionally implements the enforcement side of improper document handling and enables identifications of the user(s) who mishandled the specific document(s).