printing blank checks

[geezer]

Okay - my banks have changed hands enough times that the pile of blank checks I printed are getting to the point that they may not be or are not usable.

I have the VersaCheck blank sheets, 3/page

Buying the VersaCheck s/w makes no sense - It would take me many, many, many, many years to make it pay with the number of paper checks I write - on-line bill pay killed paper checks for me except for the maybe 3 or 4 or 5 times a year that paper is needed.

So I need new s/w, running under Linux, for printing blank checks. That's all I need - the ability to print blank checks. I use gnucash, so the accounting end is taken care of, but gnucash needs blank checks to fill in the blanks.

Does anybody have such s/w that they use and can recommend? I use only US banks.

[jglen490]

Re: printing blank checks

Interesting concept. Could put all those check-printing companies that sell boxes at $XX.XX per box.

Found this just poking around in Google: http://sandeen.net/GnuMICR/

I don't know how firm the requirements are for magnetic properties when printing the MICR codes in that funky font. Doesn't seem to be a wide variety of solutions out there. Most Linux check print software seem to require "pre-MICRed" stock.

[GreyGeek]

Re: printing blank checks

I don't print checks from KMymoney2 but check printing is available through a plugin which is already installed in the version of KMyMoney 4.5. However, the check printing template is not present, so I downloaded it from the tar file and tried it out. The template is an HTML file, so it is easily modified with an HTML gui editor, like KompoZer or Quanta.

I've attached the check_template.html file as a *.txt. Rename it to *.html.

Using the same variable names, you can pretty much layout the fields any way you want them, in any size.

[geezer]

Re: printing blank checks

I've

Interesting concept. Could put all those check-printing companies that sell boxes at $XX.XX per box.

Found this just poking around in Google: http://sandeen.net/GnuMICR/

I don't know how firm the requirements are for magnetic properties when printing the MICR codes in that funky font. Doesn't seem to be a wide variety of solutions out there. Most Linux check print software seem to require "pre-MICRed" stock.

I've been using the VersaCheck blank checks printed using a laser printer, no fancy toner, just the plain black toner cartridge from HP. Been using it for over 8 years and have never had a check rejected by any of the 3 banks with which I have had checking accounts. I got a very dire warning from a very authoritative teller once at one of the banks. She passed the check through their check reader and got a very rude surprise when it passed with no difficulty. Her expression was priceless. Also, the checks have been processed by many different banks across the country and not a single one has ever reported any difficulty. I have a suspicion that most or all of the check readers have switched to optical character reading instead of the original magnetic readers. VersaCheck has been selling their s/w for at least 8 years and boxes of check paper for at least that long. I think that if the banks were reporting a lot of problems, VersaCheck would be in serious trouble. I bought a box of 250 sheets of 3 checks per page for about $25. That comes to about $00.03 per check. Sure beats the $15 to $20 I paid at the bank for single check blanks.

I've created a gnucash check template for the blank checks printed by VersaCheck, it takes a little fiddling and experimenting, but nothing hard to figure out. With the 3 checks per page I can print 1, 2 or 3 checks at a time. Only ever printed 1 check at a time though. Always the top check (the middle check becomes the top check and then the bottom check becomes the top check).

I'm really surprised nobody has developed a simple blank check creation program under Linux so that the blank checks can then be used by gnucash or KMyMoney or whatever. The check paper with all of the microprinting and security features is so very cheap. And I'll bet most people use on-line bill pay for most personal use and only use a few paper checks per year. Probably less than 10 per year.

[GreyGeek]

Re: printing blank checks

....
And I'll bet most people use on-line bill pay for most personal use and only use a few paper checks per year. Probably less than 10 per year.

And you'd win. I've been using bill-pay using FireFox through my bank for several years. We only write one check a month and that is about to go away.