Writing, voiding, and printing cheques in QuickBooks Desktop

QuickBooks Desktop users who still cut paper cheques spend a surprising amount of time in the Banking menu. The accepted community answer walks through the full workflow, and the points that trip people up are the same every time: when to void instead of delete, and how to keep printer type and cheque style straight during a batch print.

Writing a cheque

Open the Banking menu and choose Write Cheques. This is the regular cheque form. Use it for fixed assets, inventory, non-inventory parts, services, other charges, and any expense you track. You can also use it to move cash into a petty cash account or pay a credit card balance.

QuickBooks Desktop keeps three other cheque forms behind the scenes. Bill Payment Cheques appear when you use Pay Bills. Sales Tax Cheques pay sales tax liabilities. Paycheques go to employees for salary or wages. Each one is generated from its own workflow, so you rarely need the Write Cheques form for those.

Void versus delete

QuickBooks treats voiding and deleting as different actions. The difference matters before you click either one. Voiding sets the amount to zero and puts VOID in the memo field. The transaction stays in the register, so you keep a record and can re-enter the cheque later. Deleting removes the transaction completely, as if it never happened. There is no undo, though you can re-enter a deleted cheque.

To void a written cheque, open the Banking menu and choose Use Register. Select the account, highlight the cheque, then use the Edit menu and choose Void Cheque. Record the change. To void a blank cheque, create one with a zero amount, give it a payee and an expense account, then use the same Edit menu step. Deleting follows the same path in the register, but you choose Delete Cheque instead.

Voiding matters in cases where deleting would cause trouble. Write a cheque to the wrong vendor and voiding keeps the trail for reconciliation. Let a cheque go uncashed and stale, and voiding preserves proof that you issued it. Reissue a cheque with a corrected amount, and voiding the original first stops your register from showing double spending. Deleting looks simpler, but it makes gaps in cheque numbers harder to explain later.

Printing cheques

The Print action sits inside the Write Cheques window. Open the form, then use the print icon in the toolbar. Choose Cheque to print one cheque at a time. QuickBooks prompts you for the printed cheque number, which keeps register numbering in step with what goes out. For several cheques at once, mark each one with the Print Later checkbox, then choose Batch. That opens the Select Cheques to Print window; check the cheques you want and confirm.

The Print Cheques window is where users often mix up two separate settings. Printer name is simply which printer receives the job. Printer type tells QuickBooks whether you feed continuous-feed paper or page-oriented sheets, and it has to match the stock you bought. Cheque Style is a separate choice: Voucher, Standard, or Wallet. The style controls where the stub sits and how the cheque aligns on the paper. If your pre-printed cheques already carry your company name and address, uncheck that option so the printer does not overlay the same text.

Register, memorized cheques, and access

Printing the cheque register gives you a paper list of transactions. You reach it through the same register view used for voiding and deleting.

For recurring payments, memorize a cheque. QuickBooks then offers to enter it on schedule, saving the step of retyping a regular rent or loan payment. Memorized cheques behave like any recurring transaction; you can pause or skip an occurrence without losing the template.

The answer also describes a user role for people who should write cheques without seeing confidential details. An administrator can create a role that allows cheque entry while hiding sensitive account information, which suits a bookkeeper or office assistant who handles payables.

Common surprises

Cheques marked Print Later but never printed stay in the queue and can look as though they vanished. Run the Batch option, or mark them printed, to move them out. Another common surprise is a voided cheque that still appears in the register; that is normal, because the record is the point. Work from the register rather than from memory, and the workflow stays predictable.