Bookkeeping for notaries, when the signing work pays the bills

The signing fee, the mileage, and the card charges have to land in the books before April. OnNumbers does that once a year, from $479. Lite fits one account and a light month. Standard fits a loan signing agent with a full week of appointments. You pay once. The month still gets reconciled.

What should a notary’s books separate?

A title company rarely pays you in neat categories. The deposit is one amount. Part of it is the notarial act. The rest is printing, the drive, and the hour at the kitchen table. Schedule C wants those pieces apart. So does self-employment tax, because a fee for the notarial act isn’t treated like the rest of a signing payment. Drop it all into one income line and the return is a guess.

• ✓The notarial fee, kept apart from printing, travel, and time at the table
• ✓Mileage from the log you already keep for the drive to the signer
• ✓Stamps, paper, the bond, and the E&O policy that hit the card
• ✓Signing-company 1099s, matched to what cleared the bank

Mileage almost never shows up as a card charge. You already keep a log for the drive to the signer. Keep it. OnNumbers doesn’t replace that log. What the card does catch is the stamp, the paper, the bond, the E&O policy, and the phone bill when you split the business portion off. A grocery run on the same card has to come back out. Leave it in and the profit is a story.

Which yearly plan fits the signing work?

There isn’t a separate notary product. A notary signing on the side, with mileage and insurance and supplies, is usually Lite. That’s $479 for the year. One bank or card. Around 75 transactions a month. We reconcile that account every month, and you can email when a charge looks personal.

A loan signing agent with a full week of appointments may need Standard. That’s $959. You get up to three accounts and around 200 transactions a month. Email stays. A monthly check-in gets added.

Pro is $1,799. It fits a busier year, or more than one income stream. There’s no set limit on accounts, reconciliation comes back sooner, and you get a dedicated contact. Most notaries won’t need it. A mobile notary who also invoices a second business might.

The three amounts are spelled out on accounting for solopreneurs, and again on the yearly plans. These plans are the books. They don’t include the full platform that Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise include.

Who files the notary return?

A tax firm does. The yearly price is the books, split so that firm can see the notarial fee apart from the rest of the signing payment. We don’t prepare the return. Payroll and S-corp administration stay off these plans.

If the only time the numbers get looked at is when a 1099 shows up, the books are late.

Count the accounts. Guess the monthly transactions. That’s enough to name the plan. If last year was a stack of 1099s and a shrug, you’re already the person this is for.