How do I print a check?

Question

I need to write a .NET library for printing checks. Nothing fancy: you pass in the data, out comes the printed check. What's the best way to do this?

Constraints: The format of the check.

Answer 1

A lot of people are using report generators for this. It's a bit overkill, but crystal reports will certainly do the job.

Other than that, this is a basic question about formatting printed output. Is that your intention?

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Check out the printdocument class and you can do this yourself:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188767.aspx

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If you're printing checks remotely (ie, you need to provide a check on the website that the user can print out) then using PDF is the easiest and most certain way to accomplish that, but be careful of the security implications.

Answer 2

Unless you're really ambitious, you order pre-printed checks and look at the check template. Fill in the blanks and there you are.

Answer 3

Since the format would be fairly fixed, I but you could create a Word doc that holds the format and then programmatically insert the correct information and print it

EDIT

Wow, pretty anti MS eh? You can use the full power of Words to visually set the format for the cheque and there are libraries to modify Word docs in .net, so I don't see why this isn't a slick solution

Answer 4

Wow... that takes me back! In the old days printers where dot matrix and cheques where a continous feed. I suppose nowadays cheques are preprinted single sheets and are printed with lasers/inkjets. Back then we'd just write plain ascii to the printer and send printer specific control/escape sequences for any specific formatting needs (picking the font size, line spacing, and page sizes).

Now I would like try generating a PDF and then submitting that file for printing. It out to be possible to do this with a plain text file too... though that's getting pretty close to old school. The report generator suggestion by Adam is pretty good idea too.

Generally with cheque printing it is a lot of trial and error to get the formatting right. Printing on plain paper and holding it and a preprinted cheque up to the window is an easy way to check positioning without burning through tons of cheques.

One thing to note though is whether or not there is a requirement to track the control numbers preprinted on the cheques (aka cheque number). Auditors sometimes require this and it is also a reasonable guard against fraud (accounting for every preprinted cheque is not a terrible idea). To do this you need to handle reprinting, and markng individual cheques/cheque runs as "spoiled". You also need a manual process to collect and store spoiled cheques (for the auditors). On whole it's a giant pain to get this right and can take more time than you might imagine.