Customizing Oracle Evergreen Check Printing

So, you decided that you must customize the Evergreen check printing process anyway. That's ok, I had to modify it, too.

So if you read this posting you know I said never ever change it. Well the business had to have certain changes, and most of these changes were needed. They do help speed up processing and cut down on costs.

Some things that you need to know about the evergreen print process. Evergreen uses the print driver file to store the escape character sequnces for formatting and placing various objects down to be printed. In the report design these are mostly found in little field boxes that make calls to the esc character code number (100,101,200,201 etc). This is a good listing of various escape seqences. HP ESC codes

The changes discussed here are the following:
1) print overflows from seperate tray
2) Addiong marks for envelope stuffers
3) sending second signature checks to a different output tray
4) modifying all overflows to go to overflow tray

First change, the ability to print your overflows from a seperate tray than your check. This way you are not printing all of the extra remittance pages on check stock. Not printing on check stock has two purposes. If you look at the code in the report there is logic when assiging the void and using the void section of the report. A seperate print driver code will need to be created that appears like the standard page except you make a call for printing to a different tray. For me all of the special print driver codes that I added were in the 400 range. You will also have to make changes to the orginal print code to print to the first tray for checks. Then the printer will need ot be configured to only use the designated tray for printing.
1) change exitisting print driver to print to specefic tray for check stock
2) add new driver that looks like 1 but prints to a different tray for overflow documents
3) change printer setup to only select paper designated tray only

Mailing large check runs is a tedious process and most companies utilize a envelope stuffer. These stuffers usually read marks on the paper to know when to start stuffing a new envelope. You will need to print driver codes for this. The first code tells where to start printing the mark. The second code returns the print curser back to where it was before printing the mark. This way you do not have to worry about all ofthe other print elements being moved or adjusted in ways that you are not expecting. In my case a double mark printing was used for a new document and a single mark notified the stuffer to continue stuffing.

Sending checks that require second signature to different output tray. Checks that required a second signature needed to be seperated, it was easier to just place it in the code to break it out for a different destination tray. This is also achieved by makeing changes to the print drivers.

We made an adjustment to include overflow checks as well. The stuffer wanted the checks to be the first document and not the last as the stndard program prints. The alternate tray leaves the checks face up instead of face down in the main output tray on top of the printer. This then placed the overflow in the correct way so that they too could be stuffed easily.

Citi buys new Private Jet

With all that is going wrong with Citi these days, you would think that they would not go out and buy a Jet.

50Million of taxpayer money being spent on , not an American made jet, but a French made Jet. Only 9 of these are in the US. What do you think maintenance is going to like. $$$$

You would think with the sword of Damocles hanging over them aka Nationalization, they would not be doing this. Then again maybe they know the sword has already dropped and it is us the public that just does'nt know it.

Credit to GDP

I've been reading a lot of stuff about the recent credit and liquidity freeze in the fall. A lot of speculation is being discussed on how this will impact the economy. It's a given that credit has been loose over the past few years and has helped fuel the real estate bubble, and has helped bring on the financial crises. What if Credit has been loose longer than we have thought, and only recently the barn door was left wide open?

I took some data from economagic to take a look at Credit to GDP as a percentage. A couple of interesting items come out. First, there are two definite growth rates. One prior to 1985 and the other post 1985. Post 1985 shows a growth rate 2-3 times the rate from 1952-1983.

With trend lines added you can see that we are currently above trend from the 1985 onward, but we are also way above the 1952-1984 trend line. The big question is, if credit is going to contract because of this crisis where will credit retract to. Something along the 1985 trendline, or the 1952-1984 trendline.

I guess we will find out in the next few quarters where Credit to GSP is heading. Then that will tell us what to expect on the impact of the loss of credit to the economy.