You could try implementing this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pynum2word/

Then have whatever functon calculates the check total also convert it to text and store it in a new field. I haven't explored the check writing features in OpenERP, so maybe someone else could help you further.

Not sure what fixed this, but it is now resolved for me.  I did add numpy and num2words to my python modules for another project.  Not sure if this was what fixed it or not. 

Nate, though you have indicated that you have solved your problem, allow me just to note that OpenERP does have amount_to_text function for English language (as well as for French and Dutch).  However the amount_to_text for English language is not turned 'on' by default (don't ask me why).  Anyway, to use what OpenERP had provided you need to add the amount_to_text for English language.  Create a new .py file in your module with the following content:

from openerp.tools.amount_to_text_en import english_number

from openerp.tools.amount_to_text import add_amount_to_text_function

def amount_to_text_en(number, currency):
    number = '%.2f' % number
    units_name = currency
    list = str(number).split('.')
    start_word = english_number(int(list[0]))
    end_word = english_number(int(list[1]))
    cents_number = int(list[1])
    cents_name = (cents_number > 1) and 'Cents' or 'Cent'

    return ' '.join(filter(None, [start_word, units_name, (start_word or units_name) and (end_word or cents_name) and 'and', end_word, cents_name]))

add_amount_to_text_function('en', amount_to_text_en)

Note that the amount_to_text_en is an exact copy of one of the amount_to_text method in openerp.tools.amount_to_text_en, which due to the fact that there are 2 amount_to_text methods in that file python will take the last amount_to_text method, which is NOT what we want.

After which you can use it in your report parser by just adding from openerp.tools.amount_to_text import amount_to_text