Read a driver's license barcode into a journal line

The barcode on the back of a US or Canadian driver's license or ID card holds what a journal line asks about the signer's ID. The phone can read it for you at the table, so there's less to type and nothing mistyped. It's in the phone app, on Android and on an iPhone — wherever your state's law on reading a license electronically leaves a notary room to (see Where your state's law comes in, below).

Read it

1. Open the journal line. On the job, tap Journal lines or Add a journal line (see Fill in a journal line).

2. Tap Read the ID's barcode. It's above Signer name, and it opens the phone's own scanner. Where your state has the signer told and agreeing before a license is scanned, the phone first shows your state's rule under Ask the signer first: tell them what the scan reads and keeps, then tap They agreed — scan — or Type it instead, and nothing is read.

   AndroidiPhone

   Google's scanner. It zooms in on the barcode by itself.

3. Point the phone at the barcode on the back of the card — the wide, flat one — until it's read. The line fills in and says what it filled: “Filled in from the barcode: the name, the address, the kind of ID, who issued it, the last four of its number, when it expires. Check them against the card. No picture was taken or kept.”

4. Check each field against the card, then fill in the rest of the line as usual.

What it fills in

• Signer name — as it's written on the card.
• Signer address — unless your state's journal leaves it out, or your state's law lets no address read from a license be kept. There the line says so — “The address is not taken from the barcode in California: type it if your line needs it.”
• How identity was established — the kind of ID, where it matches one your state accepts — and the Issuing agency.
• Last 4 of ID number — the last four characters, never more. Where your state doesn't allow any part of an ID number to be kept, none is filled in.
• Expires — or, on a card with no expiry, the day it was issued.

Everything else in the barcode — the date of birth, the full number, the rest — is dropped on the phone the moment it's read, and never sent anywhere.

An expired ID is said in amber: “This ID expired on …”, with your state's own rule about how current an ID must be, where the rules built in have one. Whether you may still accept it is yours to decide under your state's rules.

When it doesn't read

• “That barcode is not a driver's license or ID card.” — passports and most other IDs don't carry this barcode. Type the details in.
• “This phone cannot read barcodes here.” — type the ID in instead.
• “The scanner could not start.” — try again, or type the ID in.
• No Read the ID's barcode button? It isn't on a line for Refused / not completed, which asks for no ID — and it's on the phone only: the web's close-out has no scanner. In a state whose law leaves a notary no room to scan a license, it isn't offered either: a line where the button was says why, in your state's terms.

Some of what it says is the phone's own:

Where your state's law comes in

About half the states have a law on reading a driver's license electronically, or on keeping what was read, and a few of them reach a notary. The scan follows the rules built in for the signing's state:

• Not offered. Where reading a license, or keeping anything read from it, has no place for a notary's records, there's no Read the ID's barcode button. A line in its place gives your state's rule and the law it comes from. Type the line from the face of the card.
• The signer agrees first. Where a license may be scanned only with the holder's knowledge and consent, the phone asks before it reads anything: They agreed — scan, or Type it instead.
• No address kept. Where the address read from a license may not be kept, the scan fills in the rest and leaves Signer address for you.
• Everywhere else, it reads the card and fills the line, as above.

Nothing else about the scan changes from state to state: no picture, no date of birth, and the last four of the number at most.