Question
Is Hand & Seal my official journal?
No. Where your state requires a paper journal, your bound book is the legal record — the signer signs it. Hand & Seal keeps an index of it, pointing at each act's book, page and line.
General information, not legal advice
This page explains how Hand & Seal works. Your state’s law, and your commissioning authority, decide what you must do — when in doubt, ask them or a lawyer.
No. Keep your journal as your state requires. Where that is a bound paper book, the book is the legal record: the signer signs it, and any thumbprint goes in it. Hand & Seal never asks for a signature or a thumbprint on a screen, and never keeps a full ID number or a picture of an ID.
What Hand & Seal keeps is an index of your book: a line for each act — who, what, when, how they were identified, the fee — pointing at the book, page and line where you wrote it. It's what makes an old act easy to find, keeps your fees within your state's limits, and ties each act to its signing and invoice. See How your journal works in Hand & Seal.
Settings → State rules says what your state asks of a journal, as the app applies it — whether one is required, and whether it must be a bound paper book. See Read your state's rules as the app applies them.
Signings by video are different: their electronic journal is kept by your remote online notarization platform, with the recording. Hand & Seal's lines for a signing by video index that journal instead, with no book page or thumbprint — see Can I do signings by video?
General information, not legal advice
What your journal must be, what it must hold and how long you keep it are set by your state. This is general information, not legal advice: your state's notary handbook, its commissioning office or a lawyer has the last word.
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