We’re running low on checks, and the bank (through a third-party) will gladly sell me 200 checks for the low, low price of $54 plus $23 for shipping.
I seem to recall that any document which lists the payee’s name, the total amount owed and the correct account information is valid. Of course, I might have been drunk and/or hallucinating when I heard that.
My point is, is it possible to print my own checks, or must I resort to a usurous agent to supply me?
Yes, you can.
This site suggests using magnetic ink.
However, there are a lot of places online that will print your check for a whole lot less than $54. Have you checked these out?
Yes, we have, and ran across the site you mentioned, which kind of piqued my interest in a DIY solution.
I used to use Versa Check to print checks on their check blanks. They have really easy software to add the weird symbols at the bottom. It worked on every printer I ever tried.
Did you mean the MICR code?
Yes. I see that code is specifically for magnetic reading. I didn’t know that, though maybe I did at the time. It’s been a number of years since I’ve used it, though. I do know that I printed checks on various printers and never had a problem with any of them.
$50-something + $20-something seems like way too much to be paying.
Pretty much all the banks I can remember having accounts at will sell a box of checks (as always, printed by some third-party) for about $12. My current box appears to have 120 checks (of the two-part kind, with the non-carbon-carbon-copy of each check), and I think the non-copy checks come maybe 200 to a box. The price includes shipping, since they just send them via U. S. Snail Mail.
You can order checks from carouselchecks.com for under $10.
Cecil from 1986. TL;DR: you absolutely have the right to offer any piece of paper that has the required information. But nobody has to accept it.
Back in the 1960s the routing and account numbers had to be printed in the funky MICR font AND be printed with special magnetic ink so the primitive machines of the era could read them.
That special ink was the major obstacle to anyone but a small handful of dedicated check-printing companies being able to print checks.
Since around 1990 (i.e. the last 25 years), the requirement for magnetic ink was removed because the machines were now smart enough to read the numbers (still in the MICR font) using *optical *character recognition. Lots of crap on the internet is quoting ancient sources and has never been updated with this “new” news even though it predates the WWW by several years.
So while even today you do still have to print checks in a form familiar to the banks, including the numbers in the special font, there is no concern about what inks to use.
Kinda like leasing a landline phone instrument from the phone co, those traditional check printer companies still exist only to rip off the group of increasingly elderly folks who want to get their paper checks just as they did in the 1950s.
When I used to use cheques, the bank just sent me a new book when I got down to the last five. My wife even has a left handed chequebook - still ‘free’ (it’s bound and perforated on the right).
These days they last for years - I have written just one cheque so far in 2015.
I have not written a check in 5-6 years now. All electronic for me and the business.
As others have said, the magic magnetic ink is no longer required for the MICR stuff. (You still need to print it in the special MICR font, though, or it might be rejected.)
Legally, any piece of paper with the correct information written on it is a valid check. But the payee or paying bank is not required to accept it.
A box of checks lasts years now. I only write checks for medical bills and one-time payments. (Medical bills, for some odd reason, use a different account number for each billing, so they are basically all one-time payments, not worth configuring for online payment.)
About 40 years ago, I used to work at a small sporting goods store across the highway from a gated community of very rich folks and every now and then, one of them would come in and write a check on a blank piece of paper. Evidently, those who did this regularly were well know by the local businesses and their banks never hesitated to pay. One guy was notorious for paying his restaurant tabs with a check literally written on a napkin.
You can get an order of personal checks for under $20 from Costco.
Most banks have free check and bill payment services that you access online. You enter payee, address, amount, and they print and mail a check for free. Once a payee is entered, the info is retained and you can use it again and again by just entering a new amount.
If your bank doesn’t offer that, it shouldn’t be hard to find another that does.
Yeah, and for those rare times when I actually need an actual paper check, the bank teller will print 3-5 for me for free. Bam! That’s 5 years worth of checks, free.
If this were true, then why is that QuickBooks requires me to get preprinted blank checks? Why can’t QuickBooks just print the whole thing?
My guess is that although one can print a valid check on his home printer, it would lack the many security features which are common on professionally-printed checks. Ridiculously tiny microfine dots, for example, supposedly make it more difficult for someone to alter a check after it’s been written. A homemade check might be technically valid, but I can easily understand why the financial industry would prefer that we NOT do that.
By the way, my bank offers free checks, just as long as I don’t go overboard in the “fancy” department. Just yesterday I got a pack of 200, and they even have the automatic carbonless copy paper. But no pretty design, or monogram, and they were delivered by regular mail.
QuickBooks prefers to sell you their special security paper with the unchanging parts of a traditional check form pre-printed on it.
You’re under no obligation to use it.
Yes, by using plain paper you’re exposing yourself to greater risk of somebody altering the check later to your detriment. But that risk is pretty darn small.
Yo can pays yo money or yo can takes yo chances.