If you discover a mistake after you print a check with QuickBooks, the problem may not be as big as you think.

If you’ve already mailed the check, however, you can’t do much. You can try to get the check back (if the person you paid hasn’t cashed it already) and replace it with a check that’s correct. (Good luck on this one.)

If the person has cashed the check, you can’t get the check back. If you overpaid the person, you need to get the person to pay you the overpayment amount. If you underpaid the person, you need to write another check for the amount of the underpayment.

If you printed the check but haven’t mailed it, void the printed check. First, write VOID in large letters across the face of the check form. Second, display the Checking register, highlight the check, and then choose Edit, Void Check. This option marks the check as one that has been voided in the system so that QuickBooks doesn’t use the check in calculating the account balance. If you’re voiding an incorrectly printed check, you first need to create a transaction for the check number that printed incorrectly and then void that transaction.

In general, you shouldn’t void checks from a previous year. (You would do this by choosing Edit, Void.) If you do, you’ll adjust the previous year’s expenses, which sounds okay, but you don’t want to do this because (a) it means that you can no longer prepare income statements and balance sheets that correspond to your financial statements and tax returns, and (b) you’ve already presumably included the check in your deductions for the previous year. If you do have a check that should be voided -- say, it’s outstanding and has never been cashed or was a mistake in the first place -- record a journal entry in the current year that undoes the effect of the check. Normally, the entry is a Debit to the Checking account and a Credit to the Miscellaneous Income account in the current year for the amount of the check if it was expensed in a prior tax year. If it was for something other than an expense, just reverse the check to the same account it was originally charged.