Hand & Seal
How booking a notary works
Who you’re dealing with
Your notary does the notarization. Their fees and hours are their own — or, if they work for a notary business, the business’s.
Hand & Seal is the booking service they use: it holds your request, their calendar and the link to your signing. It does not notarize, does not give legal advice, and does not hold your money — a card payment goes straight to the notary’s own account, or their business’s.
After you ask
- The time you picked is held for you while they answer.
- They confirm, or tell you they can’t take it — or, if they don’t answer in time, the request lapses and nothing is owed. If you gave an email, you hear by email; your request’s page always says where it stands.
- On the day, when they mark that they are on their way, that page says so — and, when it can be worked out, about when to expect them.
- After the signing, that page shows the invoice once they send it. A review can be left only for a signing that was asked for through the notary’s page and completed on Hand & Seal — on your request’s page, or, if you asked one notary and gave an email, from the link emailed after it.
The price
The total comes first, with what is in it: their fee for each notarization — held to your state’s fee limits, as our rule sets have them — and their travel fee. You’re asked to agree to the travel fee: on the form when you ask, or, when it wasn’t on the form, on your request’s page once there is a price to agree to, before the signing. Unless the notary set it by hand, it is an estimate from the distance to your address until the signing is done — by road where it can be measured, from a spot near the notary’s home base or the middle of their town — and the invoice is priced from the final distance.
Your address
Your address goes to the notary you ask, for the signing, and is never on a public page. Our privacy policy says what is kept, and for how long.
What to have ready
Have identification ready for every signer — usually a government-issued photo ID; your notary will say what their state accepts. Everyone who is signing should be there. It is simplest to wait and sign in front of the notary.
If something changes
Until the appointment, your request’s page lets you cancel. If they have a cancellation policy, their page shows it; if you paid a deposit, your request’s page says what becomes of it before you cancel.