Personal check form

I wish to create a personal check form, so that I can print a check from my banking database. Does anyone have a form?

The form will need to be tailored to your actual checks, and your printer (different printers may have different margins). You can buy checks that are one per 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, which makes it much easier. Then you just need a bit of trial and error to get the layout right. You can print on blank sheets to test and hold it up to the light with an actual check to check the alignment.

There are two issues here: Are you printing the entire check on plain paper, or are you printing on preprinted checks? If you are printing on plain paper, you should be using special toner to print the account and routing numbers at the bottom of the check. You will need the font for that. There are probably standards that you need to conform to, but I am not familiar with them. You would probably be better off using security paper. Place your text boxes to conform with the standards. (Non-standard checks are probably legal, but your payees may not be happy with them.)

If you are printing on preprinted checks, then the form will depend on the checks that you use. I recommend getting a pica pole, which is a ruler with inches, picas, points, and agate units. You will need inches and points. Make a form with a data tile the size of the check, and lay out text boxes for the date, payee, amount, etc. If you have them in the approximate locations, you can print out a sample, and use the pica pole to make adjustments to the text box dimensions. You can use a regular ruler to measure, but then you are going to have to do a lot of conversion.

The pica pole will come in handy for other things, like filling out 1099 forms.