What is the purpose of endorsing a check?
I actually had to go to the bank today and so I decided to ask. The answer I was given is that a check is a legal document (a promise to pay).  In order to get your money from the bank, you need to sign the check over to them.  By endorsing the check you are attesting to the fact that you have transferred said document to them and they can draw on that account. "The best reason for endorsing a check is in case it is lost. If the back is blank, a crooked finder could simply write ""pay to the order of "" on it and deposit it in his own account. You do not need a signature for the endorsement. The safest way to endorse a check is to write ""FOR DEPOSIT ONLY"" followed by an account number, in which case the signature is not needed. most businesses make up rubber stamps with this and stamp it the minute they receive a check. That way it has no value to anyone else. Depositing checks is increasingly going the way of the dodo. Many businesses today use check truncation - the business scans the check in, sends the digital image to the bank, and stores the check. I was surprised that Chase already has an applet for iPhones that you can use to deposit a check by taking a picture of it!" In my experience, you don't need to endorse a check with a signature to deposit it into your account.  You do if you are exchanging the check for cash.  Businesses usually have a stamp with their account number on them.  Once stamped, those checks are only able to be deposited into that account.  Individuals can do the same.   I have had issues depositing insurance and government checks in the past that had both my and my wife's name on them.  Both of us had to endorse the check to be able to deposit them.  I think this was some kind of fraud prevention scheme, so that later one of us couldn't claim they didn't know anything about the check. Paper trail of who did the deposit.  Less significant for a personal account, but a bigger deal for accounts that are used by multiple people (e.g. a corporate checking account). So the bank can (theoretically) compare that signature to the ID you provide, showing that the names and signatures match and that you are the person to whom the check was written. "I believe the banks are protecting themselves when they ""require"" your endorsement. Years ago. they used to ask for your endorsement, and not require it. If you endorse the check, it legally authorizes them to debit your account, if the check is later returned for non-sufficient funds (NSF). It mostly protects the bank, and not the customer." When the check is deposited, the bank verifies the signature in the check matches your signature in file.
"There are benefits associated with a cash only business (the link states a few). However checks made out to ""cash"" don't reap those benefits listed. For anyone on SE to say your barber hides revenue from the IRS would just be speculation.  With that said there are a great number of disadvantages for a cash only business. And from my experience, a business that goes out of their way to take cash only can be a little suspicious. Luckily you are not committing any crimes or fraud by paying her cash." Look, listen, I'm talking about **fraudsters**, people intentionally manufacturing fake payroll checks, not the companies themselves doing it. You're missing the point!  Making a check that looks legit is not hard, especially if the check itself is legit and the information on it is bogus.  There is a lot of exposure when you hand out a check to someone, corporate or otherwise. You need to carefully reconcile them against what the amount was supposed to be. If you ever lose any checks you have to get those numbers cancelled immediately. It's an enormous hassle. "Let me just add that while you don't need to write the date received on the back of the check, you could. Why? Let's say someone was late in paying you and you wanted to document the fact that they were late. I've had late-paying customers send me a check dated on the due date but really they just pre-dated the check and sent it 60 days past-due. So let's say I want to establish and document the pattern in case it becomes a future legal issue. When you deposit or cash a check, an image of the front and back is made and the person or company who issued the check will have those images stored as part of their transaction history. (It used to be that the original, physical, cancelled check was returned to the payer, but that was another era.) So write the date received on the back next to the endorsement, endorse the check, and take a photo of the front and back (along with the postmark on the envelope) to document that they are a late payer. This way, if it ever becomes a ""he said she said"" issue you can easily show they have a history of paying late. If the payer looks at their check images they'll see your received date note next to the endorsement. Granted, this is a lot of trouble for a unique situation. In 20+ years of running a business I've actually had the foresight to do this a handful of times with habitual offenders, and in (only) one case did it come in handy later on. But boy was I glad to have those photos when I needed them." It's safe. You give people those numbers every time you write a check.  If a check is forged, and doesn't have your signature on it, the bank has to return the money to you; they get it back from the other bank, who takes whatever action it deems necessary against the forger. They've been doing this for a few hundred years, remember. Typically your paychecks are direct deposited into your bank account and you receive a paycheck stub telling you how much of your money went where (taxes, insurance, 401k, etc.). Most people use debit or credit cards for purchases.  I personally only use checks to transfer money to another person (family, friend, etc.) than a business.  And even then, there's PayPal. Merchants are only supposed to verify the presence of a signature, which signifies that the card owner has accepted the terms and conditions of the card / account. It was never really intended to be used to authenticate the card holder, nor is it used as such in practice. As long as someone is willing to take it, you can write it!  I personally wrote a check for a new car.   The dealership didn't bat an eye. If it is more convenient for you - sure, go ahead and create another account. Generally, when you give someone a check - the money is no longer yours. So according to the constructive receipt doctrine, you've paid, whether the check was cashed or not. The QB is reflecting the correct matter of things. It doesn't matter that you're cash-based, the money still laying on your account because you gave someone a check that hasn't been cashed - is not your money and shouldn't be reflected in your books as such. This might be blasphemy in the context of an audience that may be most focused on the gift itself, but you should be donating in a manner that helps advance the landscape, as well as your particular favourite charity. Almost 90% of businesses are in the process of trying to move away from issuing and receiving checks, and several countries in the world have already stopped using them. Checks are inefficient, costly and in a resource constrained environment like that facing most charities, create an opportunity cost that is even higher than the manual processing cost that flows directly.  As donors, we need to think about scale in a manner that many individual charities don't.  Send your donation via ACH! "When banks would return the actual physical cheque, at least you had some printing / writing from the other bank on it, as some type of not-easily-Photoshopped proof. Now many (most?) banks don't return the actual cheques anyway, just an image of it - sometimes a low quality shrunken B&W photocopy-like image too.  You'd have to check with a lawyer or court in your area, but I suspect any photocopy or image, as well as a written or carbon-copy duplicate, would not be good enough proof for a law court, since they could all be easily re-written or Photoshopped. So I don't think there's a real upside anyway. Only an official bank statement saying that the name/people written actually cashed the cheque might be ""good evidence"" (I'm having doubts that the bank's own low quality ""image"" would even qualify, unless it's verified as coming directly from the bank somehow). I'd agree with Nate (+1) that a big downside could be identity theft, either online or alongside phone loss/theft." "Welcome to the 21st century, the New Order. Forget all that legal mumbo jumbo you may have read back in law school in the 1960s about commercial code. Its all gone now. Now we have Check 21 and the Patriot Act !!! Basically what this means is that because some Arab fanatics burned down the World Trade Center, the US government and its allied civilian banking company henchmen now have total control and dictatorship over ""your"" money, which is no longer really money, but more like a ""credit"" to your account with THEM which they can do with what they want. Here are some of the many consequences of the two aforementioned acts: (1) You can no longer sue a bank for mishandling your money (2) All your banking transaction information is the joint property of the bank, its ""affiliates"" and the US Treasury (3) You can no longer conduct private monetary transactions with other people using a bank as your agent; you can only request that a bank execute an unsecured transaction on your behalf and the bank has total control over that transaction and the terms on which occurs; you have no say over these terms and you cannot sue a bank over any financial tort on you for any reason. (4) All banks are required to spy on you, report any ""suspicious"" actions on your part, develop and run special software to detect these ""suspicious actions"", and send their employees to government-run educational courses where they are taught to spy on customers, how to report suspicious customers and how to seize money and safe deposit boxes from customers when the government orders them to do so. (5) All banks are required to positively identify everyone who has a bank account or safe deposit box and report all their accounts to the government. (6) No transactions can be done anonymously. All parties to every banking transaction must be identified and recorded. So, from the above it should be clear to (if you are a lawyer) why no endorsement is present. That is because your check is not a negotiable instrument anymore, it is merely a request to the bank to transfer funds to the Treasury. The Treasury does not need to ""endorse"" anything. In fact, legally speaking, the Treasury could simply order your bank to empty your account into theirs, and they actually do this all the time to people they are ""investigating"" for supposed crimes. You don't need to endorse checks you receive either because, as I said above, the check is no longer a negotiable instrument. Banks still have people do it, but it is just a pro forma habit from the old days. Since you can't sue the bank, the endorsement is pretty meaningless because it cannot be challenged in court anyway. You could probably just write ""X"" there and they would deposit it." No, most check deposits are processed that way. Banks transmit the pictures of the checks between themselves, and allow business customers to deposit scans for quite some time now. I see no reason for you to be concerned of a check being in a dusty drawer, it's been deposited, cannot be deposited again. If you're concerned of forgery - well, nothing new there. "It is your name, or the fictitious name under which you operate. For example, if your freelance front end is called ""Zolani the 13th, LLC"", then that's the name you want to appear on the check, and not ""Mr. John Zolani Doe"" that is written in your birth certificate." In the united states, they may request a check written by the bank to the other party. I have had to make large payments for home settlements, or buying a car. If the transaction was over a specified limit, they wanted a cashiers check. They wanted to make sure it wouldn't bounce.  I have had companies rebate me money, and say the maximum value of the check was some small value. I guess that was to prevent people from altering the check. One thing that has happened to me is that a large check I wanted to deposit was held for a few extra days to make sure it cleared. I wouldn't have access to the funds until the deadline passed. "In my experience (in the US), the main draw of check-cashing businesses (like ""CheckN2Cash"" is that they will hold your check for a certain period of time.  This is also known as a ""payday loan"".  Rather than bringing them a check someone else has written you, you write them a check yourself, postdated, and they pay you the amount on the check less their fees, and agree not to cash the check until a future date.  So if you don't have the money right now but you need it before your next payday, you visit a check-cashing business and get the money, and it'll be withdrawn from your account after your next paycheck."