This is the lesson the course exists for, and the module guide states it in one line: if printing is misaligned, that is printer calibration — adjust the template's calibration profile, not the on-leaf design.

Two guides say two things, and both are right. The cheque-lifecycle guide tells you to position each element in millimetres in the designer, and its troubleshooting says to adjust element positions until they line up. This module's guide says misalignment is a calibration-profile matter rather than an on-leaf design matter. Those look contradictory and are not, because they answer different questions. Element positions define where a field sits on the leaf. The calibration profile corrects how the printer lays the page down. Confusing the two is the most expensive mistake available here, because it is paid for in cheque stock.

How to tell them apart in ten seconds. Look at the direction of the error. If every field is out by the same amount in the same direction — the whole impression sits low, or a few millimetres to the right — the page is landing in the wrong place, and that is calibration. If one field is wrong while the rest are right — the date is over the payee line, or the amount box is too far left while the signature is fine — then that field is placed wrongly on the leaf, and that is design.

That third row is why the distinction is not academic. Somebody who fixes misalignment by moving elements has not corrected the printer — they have written one printer's error into the layout. The layout is now wrong for every other printer, every other tray and every colleague who prints from the same template, and nobody will connect the two events.

The first-time calibration, step by step. One real leaf, one printer, about ten minutes. Do it once per bank template, and again whenever the printer or the tray changes.

1. Take one leaf you can afford to lose. A spoiled or cancelled leaf from that bank's chequebook is ideal, and the rest of the book stays away from the printer for now.
2. Open the template for that bank and print its calibration page. Print it on plain paper, through the printer and the tray you will really use, with any scaling in the print dialog switched off.
3. Lay the real leaf on top of the printed page, line up the two sheets by their edges, and hold both up to a light.
4. Read the offset off the paper: how far the impression sits from where it should, and in which direction, horizontally and vertically. Write both numbers down in millimetres, each with its direction.
5. Open the template's calibration profile, enter the correction and save the profile. The guide documents the calibration page, the profile and the rule that alignment belongs here; it does not name the individual fields on the profile form, so read those off the screen rather than from this course.
6. Print the calibration page again on plain paper and repeat the comparison. Expect to be closer but not exact — the first attempt usually needs one adjustment, and a second pass is the normal case rather than a sign that anything is wrong.
7. When the plain-paper impression lines up with the real leaf, print one live cheque onto the spoiled leaf and check the fields against the bank's boxes and against the bottom 16 mm.
8. Only then print a cheque you intend to hand over, and keep the spoiled leaf beside the printer as the reference for next time.

The worked example. Al Reem Contracting LLC calibrates the template for its main bank. The first calibration page comes out 2 mm low and 3 mm to the right of the leaf: the payee text prints just under the bank's payee line, and every other field is shifted the same way. The correction goes into the calibration profile — up 2 mm, left 3 mm — and the second calibration page lands within a millimetre, which the boxes on the leaf absorb without complaint. Total cost: two sheets of plain paper and a leaf that was already spoiled. Nothing in the designer was touched, so the field positions that describe the leaf are exactly as they were.

The failure mode. The expensive one is the shortcut. The cheque printed low, so somebody moved every element up by 2 mm in the designer and the next cheque was perfect. It will keep being perfect on that printer and that tray, and it will be wrong everywhere else — and because the layout now carries a printer's error, the next person to calibrate properly will find the leaf cannot be brought into line at all. If you inherit a template like that, ask when somebody last moved an element to fix a print, and be ready to rebuild the copy from the Generic preset.