The way you do that is with a Data Tile the size of the check. Then you put the fixed text in the appropriate area of the tile: Payer name and address, Bank name, and routing and account numbers, plus appropriate additional text. Then put Text Edit (if you want to fill that out on the form, otherwise you can use Text Display) boxes for the Check Number (2 places) Date, Payee, Amount both numerical and written out, Note (for the purpose of the check/payee account info).
That is if you are printing everything on the check. You are supposed to use special magnetic ink for the MICR line, but it is not required, and these days people deposit checks by phone, so banks have adapted.
If you are printing to pre-printed checks, scan a check and put it over the tile as a backdrop. Put in the appropriate Text Edit/Display boxes, and then remove the backdrop. If you have a sample check and are printing on blank paper, you can do this and just leave the backdrop.
Print out a test page of checks to make sure everything works right, and you are good to go, providing your database is set up to provide the Date, Check Number, Payee, Amount, and Note. You may need to tweak the size of the Data Tile to make sure that you get 3 per page in the proper spaces. That is why you need to print a test page. You can print it on plain paper and compare if you do not want to use any of your special check paper.
Sounds good, thanks. I’ll check out those formatting notes. “Data Tile” didn’t click with me in my earlier invesigations, I guess.
As to magnetic ink, as you note, with online check deposits (which banks invented, we didn’t impose it on them) and modern systems of efficiency (they don’t check sigs anymore either, I read), I’ll continue to work on the assumption that my old HP 1320 can do the job. But now that it has come up again, maybe I should run a check through a physical bank and see whether they have a problem. None of the 12 checks I’ve issued with ezcheckprinting has been a problem, but maybe everyone did online deposits.
Not promoting ezcp, far from it, that’s why I’m trying to move to Panorama, but they do have a usable check creation interface:
Except that I don’t find “Data Tile” as a thing. Must be me. I’ve had this love/hate (not really) relationship with Panorama forms since the early 1990s if not the late 1980s. Nor in the current “help” screen did “data tile” get a hit.
Note that once you have the basic form set up, the only difference between 3-up printing and 1-up printing is the size of the data tile. Enlarge the data tile to the size of the full sheet, so that the check is in the proper space on the sheet. Either that, or change the margin tiles.
When lost in the jungle, I get literal. I had found the “Data” thing in the “Report Tile” gezordenplatz. I did not find a “Data Tile”. But now I will go back to the “Data” box there, and see what I can do with it.
I can say immediately (which I’ve seen before in the form stuff) that if it is truly limited to PIXEL settings, I must protest. I don’t think in pixels. Even back in the day when that seemed to matter. Not to offend, but “even” microsoft figured out that a choice betwen pixels and inches/cms was a “good” thing. Or maybe I’m missing a preference somewhere.
The use of pixel as a unit of measurement dates back to the documentation of much earlier versions of Panorama. A couple of years ago, I went through the Panorama X documentation and changed all such references to points. A quick check shows that about 15 entries currently use the word ‘pixels’ so I’ll go through them and log corrections where necessary.
