Lockbox caging - scan line

We don't use a lock box service with my current organization but I greatly depended on lock box in my previous org.  The information that was contained in our scan line was Campaign, Appeal, Const. ID# and then a check digit.  We made sure that all of the information we needed automated was contained within that scan line.  It took about 4 weeks to get programming set up for our lock box service, so we needed to make sure that it was right the first time.  In addition, we needed to plan for the day when any of the fields grew in size (i.e. the const id# moving from 5 to 6 digits as we added more people to our database).  This made leading zeroes a big deal in all of our field codes.  The biggest issue we had on our end was making sure that all of the information coming out of the database was in a numerical form and not text.  Our lock box only read numerical scan lines and required the check digit.  We got really good at setting up ways to configure scan lines and computing the check digit.

Ours were delimited by spaces.  For example, our campaign code was two digits, appeal was a four digits and constituent id# was 7 digits.  There was a space between each with a check digit on the end.  They would look something like: 49 0038 0004748 9.  49 = campaign, 0038 = appeal, 0004748 = constituent id (which in our database was 4748) and 9 = check digit.  Each field was assigned a certain amount of digits in the lock box programming.  So constituent id was assigned 7 digits and was required to be 7 digits.  However, our id numbers ranged from 4-6 digits in length, hence the leading zeroes.  When we would import in the file, we would drop all of the leading zeroes so that it would match the record in our database.  We never really had issues with gifts posting wrong from scan lines.  The hardest thing we had was making sure that the field in Excel was text when we sent it to the mailing house to print our pledge cards or pledge payment reminders.  If the field was set to numeric, the leading zeroes would drop which would throw everything off.  You may want to talk with your lock box provider about why the ending zeroes are an issue.