he December 2003 Shop Trac update includes a new option that allows you greater control over how your payment cheques are printed.  This is a powerful feature that takes some careful planning to avoid printing problems.  This tech tip bulletin has been released to help you setup your cheque form.  The Shop Trac Tech Tips Cheque Parameters lists all the parameters needed to print a cheque in the same manner as before this update was installed.

The option that modifies this form is located at Setup | Forms | Cheques.  It consists of 2 screens, the first of which is almost the same as the original Setup | Forms | Cheques option.  This screen is used to select the style of your cheque, as well as to specify the font pitch used when printing the cheque stub.  The values on this screen will have been retained, and there is probably no need to change them.

The Save option has been replaced by a Process option.  When selected, it brings you to the screen where you define how the cheque will print.  This screen has 3 sections in addition to the familiar Edit Menu.

Section 1 - Form Heights

Your cheque normally has 2 parts, or in the case of laser cheques 3 parts.  Most standard dot matrix cheques have a total height of 42 lines, 21 lines for the cheque itself and 21 lines for the stub.  In the case of laser cheques, most have 2 stubs, each 22 lines high and a cheque also 22 lines high.  Normal print height is 6 lines per inch, so this value is easy to measure.

This first section requires the height values (in lines) for each of your cheques sections.  The third field is normally only required for laser cheques, or possibly a dot matrix cheque with 2 stubs.

The first field is for the first portion of the cheque, the second for the second and the third is used if your cheque has 3 sections.

Please see the Special Notes for Laser Cheques that may affect how you complete these fields.

Section 2 - Print Positions for Cheque Body

The center section lists all the elements of the cheque body and where they will print.  The print location is determined by a row number and a column offset from column zero.  Shop Trac prints cheques in a 10 CPI (character per inch font) meaning that print positions will be easy to calculate using a ruler.  A position 6.1 inches from the left edge of the form would be an offset of 61.  Please note that row numbers are from the top of the cheque body.  This is NOT the same as from the top of the form if the cheque body is not the first section of the form.

For fields that you do not need to print, simply leave the row and offset values at zero.

Please see the Special Notes for Laser Cheques that may affect how you complete these fields.

Section 3 - Print Positions for Cheque Stub(s)

This third section requires line numbers of where the headers and footers will print on the cheque stubs.  For example:  If your specified stub height (from section 1) was 21 lines, you may wish to print the header at line 2 and the footer at line 18.  Please keep in mind that the footer requires 2 lines, and it cannot be printed beyond the bounds of the actual form.  The area between the header and the footer will be used to print detail information.

Please see the Special Notes for Laser Cheques that may affect how you complete these fields.

Some Other Issues

Printing cheques on a dot matrix printer also presents a few other issues.  Shop Trac will now assume that your cheque is positioned at row zero before printing begins.  If the first section is the cheque body, there could possibly be several line feeds prior to anything being printed.  This also means that you may need to waste a cheque each time if you cannot position your cheque forms in the printer this way.  One solution to this problem is to use different parameters for the height values, and adjust the other parameters as needed.  An example may help:  Suppose you have a 2 part dot matrix cheque (cheque body first, then the stub) that is 42 lines high, with each section being 21 lines high.  If you are not printing anything until line 5, those 4 extra lines may yield enough paper to load the cheque into your printer without wasting one.  In this case, you would indicate that the cheque body was 16 lines high, and that the stub is 26 lines high.  You would also need to adjust the other parameters to accommodate different print positions.  This is not as complicated as it sounds, but if you have problems contact us for some help in stepping you through it.

Special Notes for Laser Cheques

Laser printers are not normally capable of printing on an entire page.  They require both a top and bottom margin (usually 3 lines each) that is considered unprintable.  When setting up laser cheques you will need to accommodate this when specifying form heights as well as print positions.  We recommend that you reduce the first and last section of your cheque by 3 lines each.  This means that the first line of the first section would actually be the fourth line from the top of the page, but specified as line 1 when designing a cheque.  A single page laser cheque with 3 - 22 line sections would have height values of 19 - 22 -  19 for a total of 60 lines.  The last line (line 19 on the third section) would actually be four lines from the bottom of the page.  The following scenarios may help: