If you already have your suppliers, staff or landlords in a spreadsheet or an accounting package, there is no reason to retype them. ChequeMaster imports and exports payees as CSV.

Importing

  1. Open Payee from the left navigation and choose the import option.
  2. Select your CSV file.
  3. Check the preview before confirming.

Getting the file right first time is mostly about the export from wherever the data currently lives. Most accounting packages and spreadsheets can save as CSV directly.

Preparing the file

A few things save trouble:

  • One payee per row, with a header row naming the columns.
  • Names exactly as they should print. Whatever is in the file is what lands on the cheque, so fix "abc trading co" to "ABC Trading Co." in the spreadsheet, where editing is fast, rather than on fifty cheques later.
  • Remove duplicates first. Sorting by name in the spreadsheet makes near-duplicates obvious — "ABC Trading" and "A B C Trading" are easy to spot in a sorted list and hard to spot in a dropdown.
  • Save as UTF-8 if any name contains non-English characters, so accents and non-Latin scripts survive the trip.

Exporting

The reverse works too — export your payee list to CSV to reconcile against your accounts, share with a colleague, or move to another machine. Combined with import, this is also a practical way to bulk-edit: export, fix in a spreadsheet, re-import.

Why CSV rather than direct integration

Worth being straight about, since people ask: ChequeMaster does not integrate directly with Tally, QuickBooks, Zoho or other accounting software. There is no API connection or plugin.

CSV is the bridge. Nearly every accounting package exports a payee or vendor list to CSV, and that file imports here. It is a manual step rather than a live sync, and for cheque printing — which is periodic rather than continuous — that is usually adequate.

What does not import

Payees import. Cheque history does not — there is no facility to bring past cheques in from another system, and inventing historical records would make your reports untrustworthy anyway. Start your cheque history from the point you begin using the software.

After importing

Print one cheque to a newly imported payee, onto plain paper, and check the name renders as intended. Long names and unusual characters are worth confirming before a real cheque, particularly if your cheque has a single payee line — see the Philippine formats for an example of where space is tight.