Activation is what turns off the free-tier limits and unlocks vouchers, reports and unlimited payees and cheque books. It is a one-time step per computer.

Find your licence key

After purchase, your key is on the My Orders page of your account. It is not emailed as an attachment, so if you cannot find an email, log in and look there instead.

Activate

  1. Launch ChequeMaster on the PC you want to license.
  2. Click the Activate button at the top-right of the navigation bar.
  3. Paste your licence key into the form.
  4. Click Activate.

You must be online for this. Activation checks the key against our server. It is the only part of ChequeMaster that needs a connection — printing cheques works entirely offline.

A confirmation message means you are done. There is nothing to restart.

One licence, one computer

A licence activates on a single PC at a time. That is worth knowing before you buy for a team — three people printing cheques on three machines need three licences.

If you are replacing a computer, the licence can be moved: contact us and we will release it from the old machine so you can activate on the new one. Do the same if a PC has already failed — we can free the licence from our side without needing access to the dead machine.

If activation fails

  • Check the key for stray characters. Copying from a browser sometimes picks up a trailing space. Select exactly the key and nothing else.
  • Confirm you are actually online. A blocked outbound connection looks identical to a bad key from inside the software.
  • Firewall or proxy. On office networks, outbound requests from unknown programs are often dropped. ChequeMaster needs to reach our activation endpoint once.
  • Already used elsewhere. If the key is active on another PC, activation will refuse. That is the one-machine rule, not a fault.

Keep the key somewhere safe — you will want it if you ever reinstall Windows.

What you keep

The licence itself does not expire. Updates and support are included for six months from purchase; after that the software carries on working indefinitely, you just are not entitled to new versions.