A blind may be of any given shape, and cut away at the top, side, or bottom; or, in some cases, irregular-shaped cuts are made in the middle of the sheet or near the edges. The cuts are made in order to allow certain information to be manifolded on the next sheet under the blind. The balance of the information on the top sheet is manifolded onto the blind, which is thrown away. It is reasoned that it is cheaper to use a sheet of paper for this purpose than it is to stop and make a separate sheet with part of the information only, typewritten thereon.
HOW TO HANDLE ORDERS AND BILLS ON BILLING MACHINES
Loose-Leaf Sheets with Invoices in Blanket Form. In some lines of business it is possible to use invoices of equal size. Some firms therefore have the invoices and sales sheets of equal size. The top sheet is perforated horizontally at equal distances, which permits the invoices to be torn apart so that one blanket of form invoices may be separated into three or four separate invoices. This plan can be used where the work is done on an ordinary letter-writing machine. In preparing the papers for billing, a sheet of carbon equal in size to the sales sheet is used. A heavy-weight carbon (10lb.) with hard finish is the best kind of carbon to use for this work. If an extra sales sheet is needed for any purpose, a duplicate sheet of paper, preferably of another color, can be used with another sheet of carbon interleaved between the two sales sheets. This method is wasteful of space as far as the sales sheet is concerned. If each invoice were loose and placed in the machine in such a manner that the first written line on the invoice would be two or three spaces only below the last item of the previous invoice manifolded on the sales sheet, generally one more invoice of average size could be manifolded onto the sales sheet.
Loose-Leaf Sales Sheet with Separate Invoices. This combination is made possible by the billing machine, the flat-bed and the cylinder style. Cylinder billing machines are equipped with special carriages having special feed rolls which hold the sales sheet until it is fed entirely through the machine. Cylinder machines also have an independent feed roll which can be released by a special lever. This permits an invoice to be inserted in the machine, and then clamped into position by the intermediate feed roll and fed through the machine with the sales sheet until the invoice is completed. The intermediate feed roll is then released, and the invoice removed without disturbing the sales sheet. The next invoice is then placed in position, and the same operation is repeated. This allows one invoice to be manifolded very nearly under the previous invoice. Some firms having invoices of one or two items only, which permits of from seven to nine invoices being manifolded on each page, have the invoices made up in blanket form; that is, seven or eight invoices to a strip. After each invoice is manifolded they advance the next invoice into position and then tear the invoices apart as previously described.
Carbon Paper Cut for this Class of Work. Some operators doing condensed billing work prefer to use carbon paper the same size as the invoice, and to remove the carbon paper each time an invoice is completed. This necessitates a great deal of handling of carbon paper. It is preferable to use a large sheet of carbon paper the same size as the sales sheet, feeding it through the billing machine with the sales sheets. This eliminates the necessity of picking up a piece of carbon paper each time an invoice is placed in the machine. With the former method, if one had four invoices to one page of a sales sheet, it required one to pick up the same piece of carbon paper four times, or once with each invoice. The latter plan necessitates handling the carbon paper once only, when the sales sheet is placed in the machine. The operator positions the second or third invoice on a sales sheet, in order to avoid writing over the previous invoice, by spacing the carriage three times after an invoice is completed.
Using the Sheets Serially. All sales sheets should be serially numbered, in order that when placed in a binder the loss of any sheet may be detected by a missing number. Some firms prefer to use one side of a sales sheet only. In this case, a sales binder holding 375 sheets would have 375 pages. Where the sheets are numbered on both sides, the sales binder would have 750 pages. If the appearance of a page is marred by an invoice being spoiled, that sheet is not thrown away, and the fact that it is not is an incentive for the operator to do good work.
Handling Credit Memoranda. Some firms prefer to handle their credit memoranda on different-colored paper (generally pink) for both invoices and the large sheets which correspond to sales sheets. All of the rules which govern the making of invoices and loose-leaf sales sheets apply to the execution of credit memoranda.
General Remarks Regarding Billing Machines. The flat-bed billing machine enlarged somewhat upon the idea of using special characters for certain abbreviations peculiar to various lines of trade. For instance, in the shoe business, the following abbreviations are some of those used:
| WOM | means | Women's |
| CHI | " | Child's |
| BOYS' | " | Boys' |
| BAL | " | Balmorals |
| BLU | " | Bluchers |
| PR | " | Pair |
| PRS | " | Pairs |
| DOZ | " | Dozens |
The cylinder machines have adopted the same plan. In the cylinder machines there are two distinct classes—those having two type to a type-bar, such as the Remington and the Underwood, and those having one type to a type-bar, with double the number of bars, such as the Smith-Premier. Both classes of machines can use special characters, but the machines having one type only to a bar have a preference in that they have more room in which to place special characters.