How to Print a Cheque (Check) Without Losing Your Wallet

The other day, I was looking for a way to print my cheques in a professional way. Spending a few

minutes on Google searching for "how Tom did it", I didn't get a clue. In the process I came across a great number of software vendors - selling software for printing a cheque.

Now, I really felt it was ridiculous to pay 50 pounds or $70 for something that MS-Word or MS-Excel should be able to do without much pain.

All right. My expectations aside, there is no such thing as free cheque (Uncle Sam prefers "check") printer. So I decided to do something about it. Primarily for myself, but also for the folks who would like to print cheques (against writing them by hand), but without losing a good day's earnings.

The Excel file that I have generated is suitable for HSBC cheques in UK, but it can be adapted for cheques issued by any other bank by making small adjustments (click & move). With a bit of automation, I can print the complete cheque leaf - that is, the small bit of paper (for my record) is also printed. For this reason, you 'll have to unstaple your cheque-book, and remove complete leaf for printing.

If you don't want to unstaple your cheque-book, you can remove the text-boxes from the Excel

sheet-A. In this case, you 'll have to fill in "your copy" part of the cheque by hand - or leave it empty - as most people do.

If you print the complete cheque (like me), you don't need to make double entries (i.e. on "your copy" part of the cheque and the the rest of the cheque that you submit to the bank). A single entry on Excel sheet-B will show up at two locations in Excel sheet-A. After you finish entering data for your cheque in Excel sheet-B, the Excel sheet-A 'd be ready for printing.

If you need to change the cheque book leaf margins, you can do so by opening the file in Excel and clicking on: File - Print preview - Margins.

I have stored the Excel template file (created in Excel 2003) for free access at MediaFire. Please send me an email for the excel template link ( of course, it is free for private or commercial use ).

That's all to it. Happy printing.