>I spoke to my bank, and got a quoted price of pre-printed stock that was closer to twenty cents a check.

Ouch...the bank is the last place you'd want to buy checks, though.

>(and I realize there can be big differences). However, they would not give me a price on blank stock if I planned to use custom software to generate the MICR information...

It's been a *long* time since I worked at a place where we MICR coded stuff, so maybe my comments are obsolete.

But, I don't get it. Blank stock is blank stock. They want to charge you more for the paper, to cover their costs if it is hard to read your final result? You should be able to ge the paper elsewhere, MICR code it, and submit samples to the bank until they are acceptable.

However, they should be able to provide a MICR specification to you, so you can nail it the first time. As far as the non-MICR portion of the check, different software packages print the information in different locations, and even have the ability to change the alignment of the printing. You'll have no problem getting that part to be acceptable to the bank.