In a print shop management system, a print job submission approval policy is provided to determine whether a print job submission to a target printer is approved or prohibited. The policy includes multiple policy settings of job restriction criteria enforced at job submission time. The restrictions are based on conditions of the target printer, such as PM count, jam count, error count, printer status, levels of available resources, etc. The policy may also restrict certain user's ability to submit print jobs to certain printers. If the job submission is prohibited, a message is displayed to the user but the print job is not submitted to the printer. Each policy setting may be applied to a printer based on printer type or identity. Each policy setting is created by an administrator. A user interface for inputting policy setting values is disclosed.