Post Dated Cheque Management in Tally Prime: A PDC Guide

Every dealer visit ends the same way. The dealer hands over a bundle of cheques dated 15 days, 30 days and 45 days out, and the accountant files them in a drawer and a sheet. Somewhere between the drawer, the sheet and the books, one cheque gets deposited late, one is never entered, and one bounces with nobody watching the clock. That is why post dated cheque management in Tally Prime is a bigger question than "which voucher do I use".

The scale of the problem is public. According to the Ministry of Law's reply in Parliament, as cited by the SCC Online blog on 13 Oct 2026, 43,05,932 cheque-bounce cases were pending nationwide as of 20 Dec 2024. The Supreme Court's amici had put the figure at 35.16 lakh on 31 Dec 2019. A later national number is not public.

This guide is for a distributor, wholesaler or manufacturer collecting 30 to 100 post-dated cheques a month and booking them in TallyPrime. It covers how to enter a PDC, what Tally's own help pages do not describe, the legal clock after a bounce, an Excel register you can copy today, and when an owned system is worth building.

How do I enter a PDC in TallyPrime?

TallyPrime's post-dated cheque help page describes the flow. In short:

1. Open a Receipt voucher (a Payment voucher for cheques you issue) and pick the dealer and the bank ledger.
2. Use Ctrl+T, as the help page directs, and open Bank Allocations.
3. Enter the cheque details and the post-dated cheque date there, which is the date on the cheque, not the day you received it.
4. Save the voucher.

Two things to watch. First, check how your ageing treats a cheque you hold but have not deposited, because a dealer can look settled in the books while the money is still in your drawer. Second, the cheque date is the only thing that tells you when to deposit, and Tally's help pages do not describe it telling you.

The help page also describes a Notional Bank option (switched on through F12 or Ctrl+I). Cheques sit in the notional bank until you deposit them. When the date arrives, Alt+B moves the entry to a regular bank ledger.

What does Tally show for post-dated cheques, and what does it not do?

On the reporting side, the same help page names two reports:

• Post-Dated Summary for a bank-wise view of what is pending.
• Post-Dated Transactions, with statuses of Pending, Unlinked and Regularized.

That is a useful list of what is open. Now the honest part. The Tally help pages we read describe no deposit-date reminder and no documented cheque-bounce workflow. A TDL add-on may differ, and a Tally partner may have built one for you, but we have not verified any, so we do not write bounce reversal steps here. Check with your Tally partner before relying on a particular method.

That answers a question owners often ask: does TallyPrime remind on a due PDC? Going by Tally's own help pages, no. Someone has to open the report on the right day.

Question	What Tally's help describes	What you still need
Record a PDC against a dealer	Yes, in the voucher's Bank Allocations	Cheque in a physical file you can find
List pending PDCs	Post-Dated Summary and Transactions	Someone to open it on deposit days
Alert before the cheque date	Not described	A reminder, calendar or alert
Bounce handling	Not described	A written process and a notice-date tracker
Which dealers bounce most	Not described	A history by dealer

What happens after a cheque bounces? The legal timeline

This is the part nobody puts in a sheet until it is too late. The clock under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act is short, and missing a date can sink an otherwise sound case. This is general information, not legal advice. Speak to a lawyer about a live cheque.

How long is a cheque valid? RBI made cheques valid for three months from the date on the cheque, from 1 April 2012. Section 138 itself says six months or the validity period, whichever is earlier, so in practice it is three months. A cheque dated 10 Nov 2026 should be deposited well before 10 Feb 2027.

How many days to send a legal notice after a bounce? The cheque bounce notice time limit under Section 138 is 30 days from when you receive the bank's information that the cheque was dishonoured. That is the cheque bounce notice time limit 30 days section 138 searches point to.

After the notice:

• The drawer has 15 days from receipt of the notice to pay.
• A complaint under Section 142 goes in within one month after that period ends. Later is possible only on sufficient cause.
• A complaint filed before the 15 days end is premature (Yogendra Pratap Singh v Savitri Pandey, 2014).

LiveLaw reports a Delhi High Court example: notice served 22 Sep 2022, pay by 7 Oct, complaint by 6 Nov.

Other provisions worth knowing: Section 143A allows interim compensation of up to 20%, at the court's discretion, and Section 148 requires a minimum 20% deposit on appeal (2018 amendment). In September 2025 the Supreme Court set compounding costs of 5%, 7.5% or 10% by stage. A secondary source puts the penalty at up to 2 years and a fine up to twice the cheque amount.

Why a cheque bounce case drags on

Even with every date right, the case is slow. As of 1 Sep 2025, according to NJDG data reported by SCC Online and the Tribune on 27 Sep 2025, Delhi's district courts had 6,50,283 pending Section 138 cases, 49.45% of their trial-court pendency. Kolkata had 2,65,985 and Mumbai 1,17,190. DAKSH puts average pendency at around 1,326 days, though the date of that figure is not confirmed.

The practical lesson is that the notice is your lever, not the trial. A dated, correctly served notice often gets a dealer to pay. A missed date takes that away. Preventing the bounce matters more still: check the dealer's credit limit before you accept more cheques and keep an eye on whose cheques come back.

On cost, one large bank (an HDFC institutional current account) lists Rs 200 per returned deposited cheque, though its own documents conflict. Check your bank's schedule. We have not verified SBI or ICICI.

One more shift to track: RBI's continuous clearing began Phase 1 from 4 Oct 2025, and Phase 2 was scheduled for 3 Jan 2026 (we could not confirm go-live). Faster clearing means a bounce can surface sooner, which starts your 30 days sooner.

A PDC register in Excel: columns, statuses and formulas

If you want a post dated cheque register in Excel, the PDC register format below is enough for most distributors. One row per cheque.

Column	What goes in it
Receipt date	Day the cheque reached you
Dealer	Exactly as in the Tally ledger
Invoice nos.	Invoices this cheque is meant to settle
Cheque no. and bank	Drawee bank and branch
Cheque date	Date printed on the cheque
Amount	In rupees
Valid till	Cheque date plus 3 months
Status	See below
Deposit date	When you actually deposited it
Bounce date	Date of the dishonour memo
Notice due by	Bounce date plus 30 days
Remarks	Dealer's promise, call notes

Use six statuses: Received, Due, Deposited, Cleared, Bounced, Re-presented.

Three formulas do most of the work. Say cheque date is in column E, status in H, bounce date in J:

• Valid till: =EDATE(E2,3)
• Due flag: =IF(AND(H2="Received",E2-TODAY()<=2),"DUE","")
• Notice due by: =IF(J2="","",J2+30)

Add conditional formatting so any row marked DUE turns orange and any notice date under 7 days away turns red. Match each row to the Tally voucher so the register and the books never disagree. The Tally dealer receivables guide is a good companion for how those receivables are kept in the books.

When Tally plus a good Excel sheet is enough, and when it is not

Be honest about the threshold. If you collect a few dozen PDCs a month, one accountant is careful, and bounces are rare, Tally plus the sheet above is enough. Do not build software for the sake of it.

It stops being enough when:

• the PDC sheet lives on one accountant's laptop and nobody else can read it
• cheques are deposited late because nobody looked on the day
• the bounce-to-notice date is held in someone's head
• the sheet and the ageing report you read each week tell different stories
• salespeople promise dealers "we will hold the cheque" with no record

When that happens, the dispute usually ends with a ledger argument. A proper ledger confirmation from the dealer helps, but only if your own PDC records are clean.

What an owned PDC system looks like

Say a distributor with 150 dealers collects around 80 cheques a month (an illustration, not a measurement). A system built around that would have three parts:

• A PDC register tied to the dealer ledger. Each cheque links to the dealer, the invoices it settles and the Tally voucher. Status changes are logged with who made them.
• A deposit-day WhatsApp alert to the accountant each morning, listing the cheques to deposit that day and those nearing their 3-month validity.
• A bounce-to-notice tracker. When a cheque is marked bounced, it computes the 30-day notice date, then the 15-day payment window and the complaint window, and alerts the owner at each point.

It reads from Tally and does not replace it. For wider context on chasing dealers, see our guide to recovering delayed payments.

FAQs

How do I enter a PDC in TallyPrime?

Pass a Receipt voucher for the dealer and bank ledger, open Bank Allocations with Ctrl+T and enter the post-dated cheque date. The help page also describes a Notional Bank option; Alt+B moves the entry to a regular bank once deposited.

Does TallyPrime remind on due PDC?

The Tally help pages we read describe no deposit-date reminder. Post-Dated Summary and Post-Dated Transactions list what is pending, but someone must open them. A TDL add-on may differ.

How long is a cheque valid?

Three months from the date on the cheque, under RBI's rule effective 1 April 2012. Section 138 refers to six months or the validity period, whichever is earlier.

How many days to send a legal notice after a bounce?

Within 30 days of receiving the bank's information about the dishonour. The drawer then has 15 days from receipt to pay. This is not legal advice; confirm with a lawyer.

Get your PDC register built around your dealers

Cybiqon would build the PDC register, the deposit-day WhatsApp alert and the bounce-to-notice tracker described above as an admin panel written for your business, not a template you bend to fit. You own all the code. Admin panels start from ₹29,999 one-time, scoped per build, and we will say plainly if Tally and a good sheet are enough for you. Book a 30-minute call at tidycal.com/itspyguru/cybiqon-30-minute-meeting, or reach us on +91 9250711473 or [email protected].

Conclusion

Good post dated cheque management in Tally Prime means three things: enter every PDC with its cheque date, open the pending list on deposit days, and know your Section 138 dates before a cheque ever bounces. Tally records; it does not nag. Start with the Excel register above, and when the sheet outgrows one accountant, get a system that alerts people for you. A 30-minute call is the easy first step.