Carbonless Forms

NCR sets, also known as carbonless forms, are as popular as ever as they provide an instant copy or copies of documents without the need for any specialist equipment.

Carbonless forms are often called duplicate, triplicate or quadruplicate forms depending on how many copies they produce. Whatever is written on the top sheet instantly replicates through to the second, third and fourth sheets.

Each sheet is impregnated with a pressure-sensitive chemical which responds to handwriting from a ball-point pen or an impact printer (such as a dot-matrix machine). Carbonless forms do not work with inkjet or laser printers.

Getting a quote for NCRs

We can produce NCRs in a tremendous number of combinations, so to help us provide a quote quickly we will need to know the following:

Although there are literally thousands of combinations, it is actually quite easy to specify what you need (and therefore for us to quote you a price) if you answer these questions for your specific application:

1. How many sheets?

Do you need duplicate, triplicate, or quadruplicate sets? There is theoretically no limit to the number of sheets in a set, but anything beyond four and it becomes difficult to apply enough pressure to get a clear impression all the way through to the bottom sheet.

2. What colour papers and inks?

We stock white, pink, yellow, pastel blue and pastel green paper, and unlike some suppliers, these are not pre-collated, so you can choose any sequence of colours at no extra cost.

Most carbonless forms are printed in black ink only, but they can be printed in full colour if required. The back of the sheets can be printed too, although only in black.

3. Other options

As standard, NCR forms are supplied as individual sets – that is, as pairs of sheets (for duplicate forms), trios of sheets (for triplicate forms) and so on. There are a number of options which you may like to consider, all of which can be added for a small cost:

  • Padding, where 50 sets are glued together into a book or pad.

  • Perforating, so that a portion of one or more of the sheets can be torn off (eg. for a customer receipt).

  • Numbering, also known as 'crash numbering' as the serial number is applied using impact on the top sheet so that it transfers to all of the other sheets in the set. We can number from any starting figure you give us, in case you need to continue serial numbers from a previous order of NCR sets.

  • Hole-punching, so that the forms can be neatly filed with the minimum of effort.

Turnaround time

Carbonless forms are usually supplied in 10 working days. We can often work more quickly however, so please get in touch if your requirement is more urgent.

Artwork considerations

If you are intending to supply your own artwork, please bear in mind that all NCR products need a quiet zone of 10mm. Additionally, sets to be bound into books need space for perforations, so please check with us or send us a sample PDF of your artwork before ordering to make sure it will print successfully.