How to Fill out a Cheque?

In this post, I will demonstrate how to fill out a cheque properly.

You can have a cheque book either from your bank or any store. If you find these two suggestions expensive, you could also design and print out your own cheque.

In Figure 1, a sample cheque is displayed and in Figure 2, some regions of the sample cheque are highlighted.

Figure 1: Sample unfilled cheque.

Figure 2: Some regions are highlighted in sample cheque.

1- Name and Address of Payer:

Name and  address of the person who is the owner of this cheque and is filling out the cheque should be written in this region.

2- Date:

For any official document, date is a mandatory field and hence you should write current date in this region.

3- Payee Name:

Payee could be either a person or an organization (Store, Restaurant, Company, School etc.) You should write the name of the payee here explicitly.

4- Amount of Payment (Numeric):

Exact amount of the payment should be written numerically here.

e.g.  "$254.25"

Important point in this region is that you should start writing numbers from leftmost to prevent any fraud. Someone could write additional numbers in front of previously written amount and could deposit much money than you intended to pay.

5- Amount of Payment (By Words):

Exact amount of the payment should be written here with words.

e.g.  "Two hundred fifty four and 25/100"

Fractional part is written like "25/100" for 25 cents.

Amount written in words and written numerically should exactly match. In case of an inconsistency, amount in words is considered to be valid. That's why you should be more careful in this region. If there is any space left after you write down the amount, put a long line there so that no one can edit those regions. It is advised to use capital letters here since changing/modifying capital letters are harder than changing lower-case letters. 

6- Memo (For):

This region is an optional field for payer to use as a note or a reminder for his/her own use.

E.g. "Utility Bill Payment", "4th payment of Car Insurance", "Parking Fee" etc.

7- Signature:

Just as Date field, this regions is  mandatory for any official document to be valid. Owner of the cheque (payer) should sign here.

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These 7 regions are all fields that you are supposed to fill out. Now your cheque is ready to go to payee. You are all done!

Following fields are not the regions that you should fill out. 

8- Cheque Number:

This number increases by one on every page of your cheque book.  

This number lets you to follow and register your payments

9- Transit Number:

This number is related with your bank identity.

10- Institution Number:

This number is the branch number of your bank in which your account exists.

11- Account Number:

Simply, your account number

EXAMPLE CHEQUE

In this example, payer Muharrem Demiray pays $258.36 to the institution responsible for Utility service  "Kitchener Utilities" for utility bill of June 2017.

Figure 3: Example Cheque.

QUICK TIPS

• Record your each cheque to your cheque register (i.e. cheque number, date, amount, payee etc.)
• Keep your carbon copy.
• Use pen, NOT pencil.
• Never sign a BLANK cheque, since it can be filled out by someone else.
• Write amount of payment numerically starting from leftmost of the box
• Never leave blank region in payment amount (with words) field. Draw a line in blank region.