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Below you will find our recommendations for creating a stub
that is optimized for document handling by machine, and that will get the best results in
use with the Flex product and supported transports. This will include paper and ink
characteristics, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) guidelines, and form organization
recommendations. We will also cover issues related to ICR (image character recognition).
A sample bill as sent out by one of our customers:
While there are many things done right on this
bill, there are a few things we would change. The customer logo on the stub acts as the
logo for the entire bill, which saves space on the document, but the result is that the
stub needs to be printed at the top.
This is not the best case, as we then have
to rely on the bill-paying customer to properly tear off the stub and give us a good
bottom edge. Even more disastrous results will occur if the machine making the perforated
cut in the middle of the document is not cutting in the proper place. A whole billing
cycle may come in with the OCR line in an unreadable position creating the need to key in
all of the stubs.
We recommend that the stub be instead placed at the bottom
of the bill, with the perforated edge(s) at the top and if necessary, on the left-hand
side. This means that the edges used by the machine will be much more consistent creating
higher read rates.
The bill is laser printed, which is preferred. Laser print
creates a sharp OCR line, which should read at nearly 100% with exceptions only when the
document is compromised by being overwritten with handwriting, going through the OCR
reader while not flat and level (improperly jogged, or having a bad bottom edge), or being
exposed to other situations that cause "noise" to be added the OCR line.
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