A new bankcheck processing system is presented in this paper. A full exploitation of the contextual knowledge, together with a multi-expert approach, have been used both to analyze the complex shape of handwritten text and to design the system. Several processing modules have been integrated in the system. Some of the most relevant are those for data acquisition, preprocessing, machine-printed numeral recognition, layout analysis, courtesy amount recognition, legal amount recognition, amount validation, and signature verification. Some combination techniques have also been used in the system. Reuse and maintenance of the system were two of the main goals of the designing process and the Khoros software tool was used for this purpose.