How to Write a Check

Posted On January 7, 2021

Table of Contents

A Quick Guide To Writing a Check.

With the ability to send and receive e-transfers, credit cards, and money transfer apps like Venmo, checks are becoming less common in our daily lives.
Still, billions of checks are written every year, which means that the time has come and will come. If you are like me, you have all written checks at least once in your life, if not more than once.
Even though it’s not as common, you may need to write a check. If you haven’t done it before, or haven’t done it in a long time, follow these quick steps to write a check.

Fill out the date in the top right corner. This includes the month, day, and year.

The Payee is who you are writing a check to. If you are writing a rent check, then write the name of your landlord. If you are writing a check to pay a bill, then the name of the company is acceptable (i.e. Pacific Gas & Electric).

Write out the amount of the check in dollars and cents: i.e. $100.00. You’re going to write out the amount in numbers first, then fill out the amount in words (the next section goes into more detail).

If you write the amount of the check in words, first type the dollar amount and then add the word “only” before specifying the space you provide. You can prevent people from writing checks for more money by drawing a line between the words “to” and “from” to determine how much the checks are used for.

On the bottom left is the Memo. This section is optional. If you want to write a note on the check you can. People will sometimes write ‘for rent’, or ‘payment of gas bill’. You don’t need to fill out this section and the check is perfectly valid if it is left blank.

On the right-hand side, sign your name to the check. This step is the most important and makes your check valid.

As you can see in the picture below, writing a check for cash is fairly simple: write “cash” on a document that anyone can deposit or withdraw.

Postdating a check is where people write future dates on the check instead, but the date on your check does not determine when it can be cashed, so use it as a personal note to better track when the bill was paid and when you signed it. Like writing with a cheque pen, use a pen to write the VOID that was written before your checks. If you have a thin paper check before writing it, beware of the check stops before filling it in.

If you pay your rent by check, you should know that if you write a check on the 25th or 26th, you put it in the post and put the first month on it, because your landlord can’t cash the check until you get paid.
If you wrote your check and the person paid, the money leaves your account on the day you work, so you should assume before writing that it has disappeared.
When you write checks, you withdraw money from the account before converting it into an electronic check.

If you use a cheque to pay, note down the number of the cheque that you have written, which is in the volume check in front of your checkbook, and the date you wrote it.
If you pay in the order you say in dollars, write down each amount of the check and make sure that the amounts match the number you have written down.

With these steps, writing a check (as rare as it is these days) should be easy breezy.