Methods and apparatus for determining print progress of a document being printed are provided. The print progress of a document is monitored during printing by monitoring means included in the printer. The percentage of the printing which has been completed is then computed in real time based on information received from the monitoring means. The computed percentage may be used to determine the print completion status of each print field of a document having a plurality of print fields. The computed percentage may be reported to a host device associated with the printer. The computed percentage may be stored in non-volatile memory of the printer and/or of the host device so that the computed percentage of completed printing is maintained during a power failure. The computed percentage of printing completed can be recovered from non-volatile memory upon power recovery.