NCR Forms and Paper – No Carbon Required
The term NCR typically refers to a type of multi-page form or paper and stands for No Carbon Required. NCF forms are created from NCR paper for the purpose of creating quick and inexpensive multiple copies of the same form with or without the use of a printer.
The pages of an NCR form are referred to as a parts and standard NCR forms are offered in sets of 2 to 6 parts, whereby each part becomes a copy.
Most NCR Forms are multi-colored to easily differentiate the various copies and many businesses use them for invoices, statements, purchase orders, and sales receipts. (e.g. white for the original, yellow for the customer copy).
Standard Multipart NCR Form Color Sequence
- 2-part carbonless: white/yellow
- 3-part carbonless: white/yellow/pink
- 4-part carbonless: white/yellow/pink/gold
- 5-part carbonless: white/green/yellow/pink/gold
- 6-part carbonless: white/blue/green/yellow/pink/gold
How NCR Forms Work
To achieve this, NCR paper has a clay coating on the front side of the paper while the back side is coated with micro-encapsulated dye or ink (with the exception of the front of very first page and back of the very last page).
When pressure from a pen, typewriter, or dot-matrix printer is applied to the surface of the first page, the dye is released, causing a chemical reaction that leaves a visible copy of the pressure applied on each of the subsequent pages.
