When you do a loan signing that has 6-8 places where you are required to place your stamp and signature as a Notary, do you enter a description of each stamp in your Notary Journal or do you have one entry per person for the loan signing that has multiple signatures/stamps?
Is it assumed that your fee for the Loan Signing includes all fees regardless to the number of times that you will have to stamp the documents?
What state are you in?
I live in California.
The your handbook and/or newsletter spells it out - you need to do one line per signer per documentâŠ
Buy journals by the cases 
âIs it assumed that your fee for the Loan Signing includes all fees regardless to the number of times that you will have to stamp the documents?â
Yes - assume an average of however many times you notarize and figure that into your base fee. You wonât have time to count notarizations to establish a fee for each individual signing - and hiring parties wonât count them for you. Thatâs why my base fee was $100 - $125 - 6-8 notarizations, time travel, etcâŠanything over that (scanbacks, faxbacks, last minutes) value added service
Linda is correct on all points. CA journaling is very labor-intensive. Iâm in a state where journals are not even required, yet I still keep one with the name of the doc listed as its valuable info for many reasons should anything ever be questioned.
I see that your CA notary manual on page 9 says you must record the fee for each notarial act, in each journal entry.
The first thing to consider is whether you must keep track of your notary fees for tax purposes. If you want to, you can exclude them from your income for social security purposes, up to the amount you receive for the signing. (They are still income for income tax purposes.) But if you do this, you may reduce your retirement income, and reduce your disability income if you become disabled). Talk to a tax professional.
If you do need to keep track of notary fees, set the fee per entry to the maximum allowed, if this adds up to less than the total youâre getting for the assignment. Otherwise, divide the fees up evenly among the notarizations so they add up to the total fee youâre getting.
If you donât need to keep track, you could create a fee policy in your business records, saying that you donât charge any notarization fees for real estate signings, but do charge a fee for printing/travel/scanning/waiting/etc. Then record your notarization fees for these appointments as 0.
Youâll always want to calculate your notary fees for general notary work. For these, the only fees will probably be travel and notarizing; if you called it all a travel fee, that might appear unreasonable.
Thank you all for your detailed responses. I will be definitely consulting with a Tax Professional that has worked with Notary Publics before so I can do things correctly from the start.
If you are summoned into court, if you just have one entry for multiple docs, how can you testify that a given doc matches a certain certificate. My loose leafs all have a box for a document description.
Iâm in a similar state as Arichter - no journal required but I keep one - I use the MoJo - on one line you can check the document that was notarized and whether it was a jurat or ack - you can list multiple docs in one entry line. I then have ID info for each signer and have each signer sign my book - 2 signers, 2 entry lines only - plenty of room to make notes - DPOA (A) with names of witnesses.
Iâm in CA and I am curious how you other notaries are listing the fees in your journal for Loans signings. @ashton I read both of your recommendations but I am curious as to how others list the fees especially when the Loan doc has 15 notarizationâs but the fee was $125. CAâs fee is $15 so if I did a Loan package with 15 that would total $225 if it was just GNW.
What Linda saidâŠ
@Arichter I think your response was for my question but Iâm not sure. I just wanted to clarify my question just in case it didnât come through clearly. If I take a loan signing for lets say $125 from a signing company and once I get the loan docs I notice there are 15 pages that need notarizing but I still proceed with the loan signing due to whatever reasons (i.e., docs came to late to cancel signing, etc.). In the journal after the signing how are others noting the fees per notarization if the state allows $15 per notarization?
Sticking my two cents in here - your state allows for you to charge âno more thanâ or âup toâ $15 per signature - itâs not required that you charge thatâŠyou can charge less. I would enter $15 for 8 of them ($120) then $5 for the final one - just remember no matter how many notarizations you have in one signing, from a tax exemption perspective you canât claim more than the amount of the signing fee - and you canât carry the excess over
YepâŠwhat Linda said in both replies⊠Will add, you canât âcarry overâ deductions from 1 signing to another.
Also, you really are NOT paid for Loan Signings by notarizations. Whatever the number is, it comes with the fee you agreed to. These deductions weâre talking about are only for Self-employment tax and big deductions for many years WILL impact your Social Security amount when the time comes, so thatâs another thing to think about before you jump onboard this train.
I put the maximum allowable. The notary fees listed in the journal serve no purpose (for me) other than to be used to calculate the amount of notary exempt income as follows
NOTARY EXEMPT AMOUNT IS THE MINIMUM OF
FEE(for job) - Mileage Deduction - Paper/printer Costs - Expenses(some portion of)
OR
#NOTARIZATIONS(for job) * MAX FEE
THIS PREVENTS THE SITUATION OF CLAIMING TOO MUCH NOTARY EXEMPT INCOME