When was the last time you wrote an actual check? Can’t remember? We don’t blame you! With credit and debit cards taking over and online transactions being all the rage now, who gets the opportunity to write actual physical checks? And what about the “now” generation who was brought up on plastic? Would you expect them to know how to write a check? Of course not! It will be a tad unfair to expect this from them.
But what happens when you find yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to write a check? Maybe an online transaction is not possible because the recipient doesn’t have an online account? And what if your debit and credit card won’t work because there is no swiping machine? Yes, you end up writing a check. Your bank will always provide you with a check book in case something of this sort happens. So it makes sense to learn how to write a check.
There was a time when checks could be written the standard way. It was like filling in blanks on a piece of rectangle paper. It wasn’t considered a biggie. So all that you had to do was fill in an amount in dollars and cents and write the same in words. A signature at the end and you were done! Things are a bit different now.
To avert fraud, check writing has become a little different now. This is especially true if you need to put in cents too. If you are writing a check for $1872.33, you could write it as one thousand eight hundred and seventy two. Where would the 33 cents go? Here is a step by step guide on how to write a check with hundreds and cents:
• Supply a date at the upper right corner
• Fill in the pay to the order of section by providing the name of the person or company to whom you are transferring the money
• You will see a box with the $ next to it. Write the amount in numbers.
• The line at the end of which dollars is written, needs to be filled out in words
• Then comes the signature
But wait! What happens to the cents? How do you write those in words? Let us give you an example here:
Let’s suppose that the amount that you have to write on a check is $1536.88. So you write the check as shown above. But when you write it in words, here is how you do it:
One thousand five hundred thirty six and 88/100.
The 88/100 denotes 88 cents out of 1 dollar.
This will be deemed a complete check.