The days of write cheques each month to pay your bills are long gone. Today most transaction will take place online or through a digital process such as PayPal, that said maybe you want to send money to a friend or pay a bill that cannot be paid online. For this, you’ll need to send a cheque and therefore you’ll need to know how to write a cheque in the UK the right way.
The above image is an example of a cheque that you will typically find in the UK today. It clearly shows the banks name in the top left corner, and the blanks that you need to fill in to send your cheque. Remember, if you get it wrong, you could either end up sending more money than you expected, or your cheque could be cancelled.
What You Need to Know
In order to write a cheque in the UK today, you need to fill the following details on your next cheque.
- The name of the person you’re paying
- The date
- The amount in words
- The amount in numbers
- Your signature
Payee Name
The first step to write a cheque, is to complete the payee’s name. This is who your giving the money too and the name needs to be as appears on their bank account. If you’re writing a cheque to an individual, this is usually their first name, as example if you were writing a cheque to me, you’d write it to David Jabobs.
If you’re writing the cheque to a company, you need to write it to the cheque to their business name. Remember, this might be different to name of the company. As a result, its best to check the for the business name which should be at the top of your bill.
The Date
The second step is to complete the date. Usually this could be today’s date and needs to include the both the day, month and the year. I said usually as its possible to popst date a cheque to a time in the future. This could be especially useful in time when you need to give cheques to pay your rent over the course of the year.
Rather send a cheque each month, you could write out all twelve cheques and post date them to a point in the future, that way the money cannot be taken until those date. Another example could be if you need to send money to a friend but there is no money in your bank account. You could give you friend the cheque, but write the date for a date in the future when you get paid, and you friend could cash the cheque after this date.
Note – Cheques are only valid for six months in the UK. If you get a cheque, make sure you cash it before this date. Once its expired, it cannot be recovered.
The Amount In Words
To write a cheque, you need to write the amount of money you want to pay in both words and numerical. If you wanted to send £642.86, you would right this as six-hundred and forty-two pounds, and eighty-six pence ONLY.
Its important that you write the word ONLY at the end of the sentence, as this stops someone finding your cheque and amending the amount. I would also highly recommend you to strike a line through the remainder of the cheque.
The Amount In Numbers
As discussed above, you need to write the cheque in both numbers and words. Make sure the numerical numbers that write, are the same as the alphabetical words that you’ve written before, for the check to be valid.
Signature
Finally sign the check in the bottom right hand corner.