An image forming apparatus includes: a communication interface to communicate with a plurality of control terminals operated by different users; and circuitry to: authenticate the plurality of control terminals in an order that an authentication request is received from the control terminal; send an operational screen to each one of the plurality of control terminals that have been successfully authenticated for display at each control terminal, the operational screen to accept a process request for requesting the image forming apparatus to execute an image forming process; receive a plurality of process requests from the plurality of control terminals that have been authenticated in an order that the process request is accepted at the control terminal; and control an image forming device to execute a plurality of image forming processes according to the plurality of process requests in the order that the process request is accepted at the control terminal.