Set your fees

Your fees price every signing for you: the ones you book, the requests clients send from your page, and the orders companies send. You set them once in set-up (Step 4), and change them in Settings → Fees & rates whenever you like.

Change what you charge

1. Open Settings, then Fees & rates. On a phone-sized screen, Settings is under More. What you charge shows the prices in force now, and the day they started.

2. Set a fee for each notarial act. The acts listed are your state's: Acknowledgment, Jurat and the rest, as your state names them. Where your state sets the most you may charge and we have established it (set-up starts each fee there), a fee over it is refused when you save, with a line saying what your state allows and how far that rule has been checked. An act your state limits by the page is marked (per page): its fee is your fee for one page. Under a fee, small print gives what your state says about that act. Where we have not established an act's limit, it says so there, and nothing is refused for that act: check your state's fee schedule before you charge. If you hold more than one state's commission, the acts listed are each of your states': those of the state whose commission runs longest first, then any act only another of your states lists, which says so under its fee (“Of your states, only Maryland lists this act”). What a state says about an act is given under it with the state's name. A fee for an act the first state lists is held to that state's limit when you save, as it would be with one commission. A fee for an act only your other states list is refused only when it's over the limit of every one of them that lists it, with the line of the one whose limit is highest. Where a fee is over the limit of another of your states that lists the act, the line under it gives that limit and says a signing there is charged no more than that state allows — each signing is priced under the commission of its own state. When another commission of yours ends, an act only its state listed leaves the form, and its fee goes when you next save.

   

   

3. Set travel by distance. Under Travel, by one-way driving distance, each row is a zone: Up to (miles) and its Travel fee, each reaching farther than the one before. The zones' fees start empty — no travel price is suggested (in set-up, the first zone reaches as far as you travel) — and saving needs at least one, with a fee of $0 if you charge nothing for travel; a zone left without its fee, or its miles, says so under it. The distance is the drive to the signing, one way, measured from a spot near your home base — never your door, so no price gives away where you live (Who sees my home address?). An address beyond your last zone is quoted by hand. Until a job is closed out its distance — and so its travel fee — is an estimate, and follows the drive whenever it's measured again; close-out prices travel from the final miles, and the invoice names their zone, or the miles themselves when you typed or recorded them. Add a zone puts a new row after the last; Remove beside a zone takes it out (the last one left can't be removed).

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   A note above the zones gives what your state says about travel fees. Where your state limits a travel fee by the mile — the IRS mileage rate for each mile there and back, plus $5 in Maryland — the note says every job is held to it: a zone's fee over the limit for the zone's distance is refused when you save, and each signing's travel is charged at no more than the limit for its own miles, so a nearer address in a zone can cost less than the zone's fee. The job's travel line then says whose maximum it is. Nevada limits a travel fee by the hour instead — $15 an hour for travel between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., $30 an hour between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., two hours at the least — so your zones save as you set them, and each signing's travel is charged at no more than the limit for its own drive and hour: a zone's fee that fits an evening signing can be charged at less by day. The note says how the hours are counted. With commissions in more than one state, the note gives each state's words. Your zones are held to the limit of the state whose commission runs longest when you save, and each signing's travel is charged at no more than its own state's limit for its miles. If you travel farther than your last zone reaches, a note at the top says so: a signing in between is beyond your last zone, so no travel fee is worked out for it, your page shows no estimate for it, and its travel is yours to quote by hand. Choose Add a zone and make it reach as far as you travel, or travel less far (Settings → Account, How far you travel). Until then, Today's Needs you says it too, with Add a zone.

4. Set the extras. Printing, per page is charged for each page you print. Outside your working hours, extra is optional, and starts empty: when set, it's added to a signing that starts outside the hours in Settings → Hours. Waiting, per 15 minutes is optional too: it's charged only when you add waiting minutes at close-out — and on a company's flat-fee order, only when you tick there that the company agreed to pay it.

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5. Say what a signing that falls through costs, if you charge for it. Under When a signing falls through (in Settings, not in set-up), all of it is optional — nothing is set until you set it:

   • No-show fee is billed instead of the signing when you close a job out as Signer didn't show on the phone. On the invoice as is what the bill calls it; left empty, it says “Trip fee — signer not available”. With no no-show fee, a no-show bills your travel fee.
   • Late-cancellation fee and When it's called off within (hours) — 24 is common — go together. When you cancel a booking that close to its start, the phone's Cancel sheet (and the job's Cancel job on the web) offers Charge your late-cancellation fee, unticked: tick it when they called it off. It goes on an invoice of its own, which you send like any other. A deposit you took yourself and keep counts toward it — only the rest is billed, never both. It isn't offered when the deposit came through your page (a cancel gives that back), or when an invoice the cancel keeps already bills the job — one with money paid on it or a bank transfer on its way, a draft, or one that bills other signings too. An open invoice of this signing alone, with nothing paid on it, is voided by the cancel, and the fee goes on its own. When the client or the company calls a signing off themselves — from their own page or their desk — your late-cancellation fee isn't charged for that one: it is charged only when you cancel a signing yourself. Where you had accepted the signing and it's called off inside your window, the notification and the email that tell you say so, with how long before it was — unless your fee is $0, an invoice the cancel keeps already bills the job, or the signing carries a deposit taken through your page. That deposit follows its own rule, not this fee's: Ask for a deposit when clients book from your page.

   Both show on your public page's price list once set, so nobody meets them for the first time on a bill.

6. Choose when the new prices start, and save. Leave Starting empty and they start today. Choose a later day and today's prices stay until then; the card then says New prices start on that day. When your state's limits are about to change, the line under Starting gives the day, so you can set your prices for it ahead. Then choose Save fees. From 60 days before such a change, Today offers it in one tap too — a button that begins Use, with the new limit and its day — keeping everything else as it is; see Plan your day on Today.

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Show or print your fee schedule

Some states have a notary show her fees: a schedule posted, or handed to each person when she works away from her office. Settings → Fees & rates has one made from the fees you saved.

1. Choose Open your fee schedule — or your fee schedule, at the top of the form.

2. Read the sheet. Your name as clients see it, the state that commissioned you, each notarial act you have a fee for, and travel as you charge it. It follows your fees: change one, and the sheet changes with it.

3. Show it on the screen, or choose Print or save as PDF. It prints on US Letter, black on white, with nothing of the app around it.

If you hold commissions in more than one state, each has a sheet of its own on the web: choose the state above the sheet. Each lists the acts of that state's list you have a fee for, in its own words, and gives every fee at no more than that state's limit, where the limit is a figure for the act or, for travel, by the mile: the most a signing there is charged in person. Where a state limits travel by the hour, as Nevada does, a zone's fee is given “up to” itself; a signing is charged no more than that state's hourly limit for its own drive and hour. In the phone app, More → Fee schedule shows the sheet of the commission that runs longest.

Beside the sheet, a card named for your state — What Missouri asks, say — gives your state's own rule about showing or telling your fees, with the law it comes from, where your state has one. How it is made says the size of type the sheet is set in. Where your state names a least size of type for a fee schedule, every part of the sheet is set in it or larger; elsewhere it is 12-point. The same rule is in Settings → State rules, under Showing and telling your fees, with a link to the sheet.

The sheet needs a commission on file that has not run out, and at least one fee saved. In a business with several notaries it lists the owners' prices, under your own name.

Say what a job has to beat

These two figures are yours alone: nobody else sees them. With them, every request and order shows what it actually pays per hour: the fee, less the drive and the printing, over the time it takes. That's shown beside your target, so a low-paying job is plain before you say yes.

1. Fill in What a job has to beat. Under the fees: What an hour of your time has to earn, and What a printed page costs you (your paper and toner). Both are optional.

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2. Choose Save.

Your target is also what a company's order is measured against when you name a fee of your own, and what Say yes for me goes by.