Before the first invoice: the W-9
A company that is going to pay you asks for a Form W-9 first: your name, your business’s name if it has one, your address and a taxpayer identification number, so that it can report what it paid you. For a sole proprietor the form asks for your own name on line 1 and the business name on line 2, and says: “If you are a sole proprietor and you have an EIN, you may enter either your SSN or EIN.”
An employer identification number costs nothing — the IRS’s own words are “You never have to pay a fee for an EIN” — and many notaries get one so that the number on a form sent to a dozen companies is not their Social Security number. The form itself notes that the IRS encourages a sole proprietor to use the SSN. Either is allowed; the choice is yours.
A W-9 is worth stealing
It carries your name, your address and your tax number. Send it only to a company you have checked is the one it says it is — call the number on its own website, not the one in the email — and not as an open attachment if the company offers another way.
The invoice
Send one for every job, the day the job is done. It should let someone in accounts payable approve it without writing to you:
- Who and when. Your name or your business’s, the company’s, the invoice’s own number and its date.
- Which job. The company’s order or file number, the day of the signing, and the signer’s name as the order gave it.
- Each charge on its own line. The fee for the notarial acts apart from travel, printing and the rest — your state may limit the first, and the IRS treats it differently from the others (notary income and taxes).
- The terms, and how to pay. When it is due, and where the money goes: a check’s payee and address, a bank transfer’s details, a link to pay by card.
Terms: agree them before the first job
Companies seldom pay at the table. Most pay on terms — net 30 means the invoice is due thirty days after its date — and some run their payments on set days of the month. Ask before you take the first order, and write the answer down:
- Who pays you: the signing service that sent the order, or the title company behind it?
- On what terms, counted from which day?
- What is paid when a signing does not happen — the borrowers did not show, or would not sign — after you have printed and driven?
- Where do invoices go, and is there a portal they must be entered in?
Put the terms on every invoice. An invoice with no due date is never late.
When an invoice ages
- The day after it is due, send it again with one line: the invoice number, the amount, the day it was due.
- A week later, telephone accounts payable — not the coordinator who sent the order — and ask what day it is scheduled to be paid.
- Each month, send every company that owes you a statement: all its open invoices on one page, with their ages.
- Keep it to the company. Your invoice is the company’s to pay unless the order said otherwise; the borrowers are not asked for it.
A late fee belongs on an invoice only if the company agreed to one beforehand. What you do about a company that will not pay at all is a question for an attorney; what you do first is stop taking its orders.
The forms at the end of the year
A company that paid you $2,000 or more in the year for services generally files a Form 1099-NEC with the IRS and sends you a copy. That floor is for payments made in 2026 and after; it was $600. Card payments are reported on a Form 1099-K: by the card processor whatever they come to, and by a payment app or online marketplace once payments to you for goods or services pass $20,000 in more than 200 transactions — it may send one for less. Either way the IRS’s rule is the same: you report all of your income, whether a form comes or not.
How Hand & Seal runs it
Your W-9 is added once and shared, if you choose, with the companies whose orders you take. Each company carries its own terms, so an invoice is dated, due and late by itself; reminders go out in your name — by themselves, if you turn that on, and after the final notice on an invoice with payment terms a statement once a month — a monthly statement shows a company what it was invoiced, what it paid and what it still owes, and is emailed to it with one press; and an invoice goes out with a link of its own. The notarial fee stays on a line of its own. See what it does.
This guide describes common practice and the IRS’s published rules; your agreement with each company decides. It is not legal or tax advice.