Laser Check Printing

What is Laser Check Printing?

Laser check printing is the process of printing checks directly from your accounting program to a laser printer. The term “Laser Check Printing” is most commonly used to describe MICR laser check printing where the company, bank and MICR information is printed in a single pass through the printer. M.I.C.R. stands for Magnetic Character Ink Recognition. A properly formatted MICR line must appear at the bottom of every check to comply with banking requirements and insure that checks are smoothly processed through the banking system. The primary components of a laser check printing system include secure blank check forms, a MICR laser printer (or just a MICR toner cartridge) and software functionality that adds the required check elements such as the bank address, MICR line and signatures.

Laser Check Printing on Preprinted Check Forms:

Many popular accounting programs require preprinted check stock of a particular format. Such check stock is usually special ordered with the company name, address and MICR information preprinted on the forms.

Preprinted checks are loaded in a laser printer and are essentially “filled out” by the accounting program. While the use of preprinted laser checks is quite common and generally effective, preprinted laser checks present difficulties. Proper feeding through the laser printer is critical as preprinted checks are sequentially numbered. Feeding issues and printer jams cause serious problems when checks are printed out of sequence. Additionally, preprinted checks must be purchased in advance and safely stored until they are required. A high degree of obsolescence and waste is common when using preprinted checks as information becomes outdated whenever an address or bank account changes. When check printing is required for numerous bank accounts or companies the inconvenience of maintaining separate forms for each account can become overwhelming.

Laser Check Printing on Blank Check Forms:

Laser check printing on blank check stock eliminates the difficulties associated with preprinted laser checks. Blank check stock costs less and is used in conjunction with a MICR laser printer and MICR laser check printing software (or with native MICR printing often found in newer accounting programs). Unlike ordinary paper, numerous security features are present in the blank check stock that is designed for use with laser check printing systems. Most formats contain warning bands, secure backgrounds, visible/invisible fibers and other features to insure document security.

For accounting applications that offer native MICR functionality, using blank check stock is a simple matter of purchasing the appropriate check format and entering the necessary information into the accounting program. Other systems require a more substantial effort and many require custom programming to perform MICR printing. Any accounting system, however, can be enhanced to perform MICR laser check printing on blank stock with our versatile, “add-on” software.

Leave the hassles of preprinted and numbered check forms behind with one of our laser check printing solutions!

If your accounting system does not natively support MICR printing you can add MICR capability with one of our laser check printing software packages. Even if your accounting program can be configured to perform basic MICR printing it may be more sensible to purchase a separate program to handle check printing that provides greater security and flexibility. With the ability to audit and control the entire check printing process (and also recover from difficulties encountered during printing like printer jams) our versatile software will streamline and secure this very important task.