Cheque Alignment Guides, Overview

If you print onto pre-printed cheque stock, the kind that already has your payer details, bank block, the "$" box, "Pay to the order of", and the MICR line along the bottom edge, the tricky part is getting the values URBI prints (payee, date, amount, and so on) to land exactly in the boxes already on the paper.

The Cheque Printing setup now shows alignment guides: on-screen outlines of every pre-printed element, so you can drag URBI's fields to line up with your stock and see the result before you print a single cheque.

Cheque printing (and these guides) is available on KORE and PREMIUM plans with accounting enabled. It is a staff / property-manager feature.

What the guides are

The guides are on-screen outlines that reproduce a real cheque. There are ten of them:

• Payer block (your name and address)
• Cheque number
• "Pay to the order of"
• DATE label
• The "$" amount box
• The dollars / security line
• Bank block (bank name and address)
• Memo line
• The MP / lock security mark
• The MICR line at the very bottom, cheque number, transit, and account number, shown in a monospace (typewriter-style) font

They sit under the real fields so you can drag each URBI field to match the box beneath it.

The most important rule: guides never print

The guides are for setup only. They are never printed, not on a real cheque, and not on a test print. They exist so you can position your fields against a picture of your cheque stock; the actual printing on the paper is already there.

That is also why the change is safe on stock you have already calibrated: your saved layouts pick up the new guides automatically, with nothing on the printed page changing unless you move a printable field.

Dynamic vs. Guide

Every item in the preview is one of two kinds, shown by a small chip and a legend:

• Dynamic (prints), a value URBI fills in and prints: payee, date, amount, amount in words, memo, cheque number, payer address, signature line.
• Guide (pre-printed, never prints), an outline of something already on your cheque stock. The MICR line's chip reads Guide · MICR.

The "Show guides" toggle

A Show guides toggle sits above the preview and is on by default. Turn it off once you have finished aligning to declutter the canvas and see just the fields that will actually print. The toggle only changes what you see on screen, it never affects what is saved or printed.

A few realistic touches

For a true-to-life picture, the setup canvas also shows fixed pre-printed "chrome", the tear-off perforation strip, the ornamental border band, and the fine security microtext. Like the guides, these are only drawn to help you align and are never printed. They hide with the Show guides toggle too.

What did not change

• Cheque printing still does not move money or change any accounting record. Printing and reprinting are display-only, no journal entry, no status change.
• The guides do not change which of your printable fields are on or off. If your stock already pre-prints the cheque number, you can turn URBI's dynamic cheque-number field off yourself.

Next: How to set up cheque alignment with the guides.