Information from a document is read by a reader sorter; the information is organized in fields including a transit field which is made up of 8 decimal digits and a check digit. The 8 decimal digits are each multiplied by a predetermined number which depends on the position of the decimal digit in the transit field as indicated by a position counter. Signals indicative of the decimal digit and the position in the transit field are applied to the address terminals of a Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM). Each address location stores the units position of the product of the multiplication of the decimal digit times the predetermined value. A firmware routine stored in a control memory performs the check digit calculation "on the fly" using the units position of the product from the PROM and certain status bits stored in a scratchpad memory.