>Alex,
> thanks for some very usefull info. I'll give the client your recomendation about just using pre-printed checks. I would make everyone's life easier.
>John.

I have a client that wanted to do the same thing. They write about 500-800 checks a week and we figured that from a cost basis, it was cheaper to just preprint the checks for the laser. We were using impact checks before so the new checks were very favorably accepted by the recipients (they could actually read the checks now). The only modification we made was to calculate the checks in our legacy Foxpro DOS program and now print the checks in a new VFP application that also produces the check register, an issues file we send to the bank to accept only the checks and amounts (avoided our exposure to playing around with our checks) and a check reconciliation file.

Bottom line, we virtually eliminated our exposure to bad checks, reconcile our checks in about 5 minutes per month and have neat looking checks.