How to Fill a Cheque Correctly — A Field-by-Field Guide for India (2026)

A cheque looks simple. Six fields, a pen, ten seconds — done. And then the bank returns it with a "irregular drawing" stamp and you've lost a week.

I've watched this happen more times than I can count. Someone signs above their printed name. Someone writes "Five Thousand" without the "Only". Someone post-dates by accident because the calendar app on their phone said 24th and the bank counter clerk had to point at the slip and say "sir, today's date isn't 24th."

Here's the field-by-field walkthrough that would have saved them all. CTS-2010 standard, applies to every Indian bank — SBI, HDFC, ICICI, Axis, Kotak, PNB, the cooperative banks, all of them. If you fill these six things correctly, your cheque clears on time. Get any one wrong, you bounce.

Field 1 — The Date (Top Right Corner)

The date box on an Indian cheque is the smallest field and the one people get wrong most often. CTS-2010 lays it out in DDMMYYYY boxes. Eight digits, no slashes, no dots. If your branch printed dd/mm/yyyy guides under the boxes, fine — match that exactly. Don't write "25th May 2026". Write 25052026. One digit per box.

The date you write matters more than people think. Cheques are valid for 3 months from the date written, not 3 months from the day you handed it over. So if you date a cheque 1st January 2026 and the payee deposits it on 5th April, it's stale — the bank will reject it. (Background on validity: Cheque Validity Period in India.)

Two common mistakes:

• Post-dating by accident. You're filling out the cheque at 11pm and put tomorrow's date because that's when you'll hand it over. Then you forget. The payee deposits it the next morning — bank holds it till the date arrives. Not strictly wrong, but slow.
• Back-dating to "save tax this quarter". Two problems: (1) the cheque is closer to expiry, and (2) if the date is more than ~3 months before deposit, it's stale and bounces. Don't.

Field 2 — Pay To (The Long Line)

This is the payee field. Whoever you're paying — a person, a vendor, a company — their full legal name goes here. Not the casual name. If their bank account says "Sharma Trading Co. Pvt. Ltd.", write exactly that. Not "Sharma Trading" or "Sharma & Co.". The bank matches this line against the account name on the credit side. Mismatch → returned cheque.

Right at the end of the name, draw a horizontal line all the way to the edge of the field. Like this: Sharma Trading Co. Pvt. Ltd.________________________ This line is non-negotiable. Without it, someone can add words after the name (a process called "altering the payee"), which is a known fraud pattern. The line locks the field.

If you don't yet know the payee's name (say, you're writing a refundable advance), don't write "Self" unless the cheque is genuinely for yourself. "Self" is treated as a bearer instruction — anyone holding the cheque can encash it. Use it only when you're walking the cheque to your own bank counter.

Field 3 — Amount in Figures (The Boxed Field on the Right)

The boxed field with the ₹ symbol pre-printed. Indian cheques follow the Indian numbering system: lakhs and crores, with commas at 2–2–3 from the right. ₹1,25,000 — not ₹125,000.

Two rules:

1. End every figure with /-. ₹1,25,000/- means the rupee amount is final; no paise. If there are paise, write ₹1,25,000.50/-. The /- closes the field so nobody can add a zero. This is the single highest-leverage cheque-fraud defence and most people skip it.
2. No gaps between digits. Write tight against the ₹ symbol. Don't leave room for a "1" to be slipped in before your "25,000".

If your amount is short (say, ₹500), draw a line through the empty boxes to the right. Pen-fill the unused space so it can't be tampered with.

Field 4 — Amount in Words (The Long Line)

The most-rejected field on Indian cheques. People write it casually and the bank rejects the cheque under "amount in words and figures differ". Here's the safe template:

Rupees [amount in words] Only

Three rules:

1. Always start with "Rupees". Lowercase or capital, doesn't matter, but the word must be there.
2. Write the full Indian-system word version: "One Lakh Twenty Five Thousand", not "One Hundred Twenty Five Thousand".
3. End with "Only" and then a line all the way to the right edge of the field. Rupees One Lakh Twenty Five Thousand Only_______________________

The "Only" suffix matters. Without it, someone can write "and Fifty Paise" after your word amount and now the bank has to honour ₹1,25,000.50. The line after "Only" prevents the same thing.

Paise: if you must, write "Rupees One Lakh Twenty Five Thousand and Fifty Paise Only". Most businesses round to whole rupees on cheques specifically because the paise field invites mistakes.

If the words and figures disagree (Field 3 vs Field 4), most Indian banks honour the amount in words, but they're well within their rights to return the cheque. Mismatches are the #1 reason for non-malicious cheque returns at the SBI counters I've stood at in Pune.

Field 5 — Signature (Bottom Right)

The signature on the bottom right has to match the specimen signature the bank has on file for the account. Not "close enough". Not "I sign slightly differently when I'm in a hurry". The same signature.

If your signature has evolved over the years (and most do), submit a fresh specimen at your branch. SBI, HDFC, and ICICI all let you do this in 10 minutes at the branch. PNB and some cooperative banks make you fill a form — still worth the half hour.

For company cheques, the signature panel is usually below the amount-in-words line, and most cheque leaves are pre-printed with the company name and "Authorised Signatory" text. Sign above the printed name, not below. Sounds obvious — about 4% of returned cheques in the SMB cluster I tracked at a Surat bank had this exact issue.

Two-signature accounts (joint or partnership): both signatures, both on file. One missing → returned.

Field 6 — Crossing (Top Left, Optional but Important)

The two parallel lines drawn diagonally across the top-left corner of the cheque. This is the crossing, and it tells the bank: don't pay cash over the counter — credit only to a bank account.

Three flavours every cheque writer should know (and a full deep-dive in All Types of Cheques in India once it's live):

• General crossing — just the two lines, nothing written between them. Cheque must be paid through a bank account, but any account.
• "& Co." crossing — & Co. written between the lines. Same as general crossing, slightly safer historically (now uncommon).
• "Account Payee Only" — A/c Payee Only written between the lines. The safest option. The cheque must be credited only to the named payee's bank account. No endorsement, no third-party deposit. This is the default for almost every Indian business cheque post-2010 and you should treat it as default.

If you don't cross the cheque, it's a bearer cheque — whoever physically holds it can cash it. Lost cheque + no crossing = lost money. Cross every cheque you don't personally hand to the payee at the counter.

The Six Fields, In Order, In One Glance

1. Date — DDMMYYYY, eight digits, no slashes.
2. Pay To — full legal name + line to the right edge.
3. Amount in Figures — Indian comma format, /- suffix, no gaps.
4. Amount in Words — "Rupees [words] Only" + line to the right edge.
5. Signature — matches bank specimen, above any printed name.
6. Crossing — two diagonal lines top-left, "A/c Payee Only" inside.

That's it. Six fields, ten seconds when you know the rules, zero bank returns.

The Things Bank Counters Always Reject

If you ever wonder why your cheque was returned without bouncing for funds, these are the usual suspects:

• Overwriting on any field — even one struck-out digit on the amount field disqualifies the cheque. Cancel the whole leaf and start a new one. (More on this in 5 Cheque Printing Mistakes That Cost Indian Businesses Money.)
• Using anything other than blue/black ink. Red ink, pencil, gel pens with metallic ink — all rejected.
• Cheque torn, stapled, or with cellotape — CTS-2010 scanners can't read damaged paper. Reissue.
• MICR band smudged or written on — the magnetic ink band at the bottom is sacred. Don't write over it, don't fold through it. (What MICR is and why it matters.)
• Wrong cheque book — if you've moved branches and are still using the old cheque book, the IFSC / account number won't match the new branch. Reissue from the new book.

When You Mess Up: Cancellation, Not Correction

Made a mistake on Field 3? Don't strike through and rewrite. Write CANCELLED across the whole leaf in big letters, tear it lengthwise (so the MICR band is destroyed), and start a new leaf. Banks will not honour a corrected cheque under CTS-2010, full stop. Keep the cancelled leaf in your records — it's part of your audit trail. (Background on CTS-2010 standards.)

What This Looks Like in Practice

A real example, sanitised, from a Mumbai SMB I helped:

Date: 25052026
Pay To: HDFC Bank Ltd ___________________
Amount (figures): ₹2,50,000/-
Amount (words): Rupees Two Lakh Fifty Thousand Only ___________________
Crossing (top-left): A/c Payee Only

Six seconds with the rules in your head. Cheque deposited 25th May, credited 26th May (T+1), no return, no follow-up. That's the whole point of doing it correctly — boring is good, predictable is good. How long cheques take to clear once they're filled right is a separate concern.

Why This Still Matters in 2026

UPI exists. NEFT exists. RTGS exists. And cheques are still the default for rent, security deposits, large vendor payments, partnership settlements, government refunds, post-dated salary advances, and a hundred B2B scenarios where digital rails are either disallowed or unreliable. The Reserve Bank of India still clears tens of crores worth of cheque value every working day. The skill of filling a cheque correctly is not going to retire.

And if you're printing cheques rather than hand-writing them, the same six fields apply — they're just typed instead of penned. Cheqify pre-validates every field before printing so the cancelled-leaf cycle goes away. But whether you print or write, the rules are the rules.

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