Where are you located? What does it cost?

The two questions that people ask most often when they call is “Where are you located?” and “What does it cost?”

Even though those questions are answered on the Frequently Asked Questions page, it seems that not everyone is willing to look at that page, so I will answer them here.

Where are you located? 

The focus of Notary Memphis is to provide notary public and related services to people where they are. In other words, I am primarily a mobile notary public.

Notary Memphis does not have a fixed location. I work at homes, offices, stores, restaurants, libraries, and other places all over Shelby County.

Sometimes, I even go to Tipton or Fayette County.

If you are coming to me, I may be near my home in southeast Memphis (near Mt. Moriah) or I may be anywhere in those 3 counties, depending on when you call.

I work by appointments and, if I am available when you call, I will be happy to make an appointment with you. We can discuss where I will meet you when the appointment is set.

What does it cost?

As noted above, the focus of Notary Memphis is providing mobile services. So, the first question is do you need me to come to your chosen location? If so, my trip fee is $25.00 for that trip. This trip fee applies anywhere in Shelby County. The trip fee is in addition to the notary fee, which is $10.00 per document during the week and $15.00 per document on Saturday. (I am closed on Sunday.)

If you are willing and able to come to me at a nearby place that I suggest, the trip fee is waived and the cost would be only the notary fee ($10.00 per document during the week or $15.00 on Saturday).

Here are four examples of how this works.

1. One document notarized at a location I suggest (where you come to me) during the week would cost $10.00.
2. One document notarized at a location I suggest (where you come to me) on Saturday would cost $15.00.
3. One document notarized at a location you choose (where I come to you) during the week would cost $35.00
4. One document notarized at a location you choose (where I come to you) on Saturday would cost $40.00.

If you have more than one document, add the stated notary fee ($10 during the week or $15 on Saturday) for each additional document. All fees are due in cash at the time of service.

Sometimes, I am available for mobile notary services after my usual hours for an extra late-night fee, which we can discuss at the time you call.

So, what it costs depends on what level of service you choose.

I hope this helps you to understand how Notary Memphis operates. Please see our Contact Info page if we can help you.

Notary Memphis business card

Learning Business Basics

I wrote here recently about the top three big questions that all notary signing agents must answer. The biggest of those is the first: how will I do business?

One reason that so many new businesses fail is the person who jumps into it without answering that question. While there are some particulars about a notary business that must be taken into account, getting started without any knowledge of business basics is a recipe for failure.

Small businesses (notary or otherwise) need to address these business basics when they start so that they can avoid problems later on & have a firm grasp of where they are on the road to success. So, what are the business basics?

Here’s a great place to start in your business education, as it’s your tax dollars at work, so it’s free to use

sba.gov/starting-business

Here is another one. There’s going to be a FREE online half-day conference coming on June the 8th (from noon to 5pm Eastern time, 11am to 4pm Central time, 10am to 3pm Mountain time, or 9am to 2pm Pacific time). It’s sponsored by SCORE and others. See this link for the details & to register: Small Business Success Virtual Conference.

And here is a third one: the Small Business Administration has an online Learning Center that offers free classes that are available at your convenience, 24/7/365. Check this out at
https://www.sba.gov/tools/sba-learning-center/search/training

Go! Learn! Grow!

Top 3 Questions Every Notary Signing Agent Must Answer

Every person who decides to become a notary signing agent will find that they have questions. In fact, there are so many questions that must be answered that it’s easy to overlook some of them or to be overwhelmed by them. So, I’ll try to break it down for you. 

When you become a notary signing agent, you’re launching a business. This means that what you need to know can be grouped into 3 top questions. 

1. How do I run a business? 
2. How do I handle the duties of a notary public? 
3. How do I become a successful signing agent? 

Each of these Top 3 Questions has a host of issues wrapped up within it, so it will take unpacking of those issues to become a professional and expert notary signing agent, one who is capable of making a living at this. I will do some of that unpacking for you in my upcoming book on the NSA business. Please check back here in the coming weeks for news about that book. 

In the meantime, I invite you to read over the articles here, especially those in my For Notaries category and those linked to on my Notary Tips page. 

On US Form 1099s and Notaries

The subject of US Form 1099s and Notaries comes up often in the various notary groups on Facebook, so I hope the following will be of some assistance.

The notary associations and others will tell you to contact the company for a corrected 1099 if it is wrong or to request one if it is missing, but I would rather just use my own records of my income and expenses and file any necessary tax returns based on my own records.

That’s what you’re responsible for — keep accurate records & report what your records show when you file your taxes. You aren’t responsible for whether they send you a 1099 or whether it’s accurate.

It’s your income. Of course, you should report it. The 1099s are more for their records to document their business expenses than they are for your records to document your income.

How a US Form 1099 May Be Wrong as a Statement of Your Income

Even if you receive a US Form 1099, it may not be an accurate record of your income.

For the vast majority of all notaries and other small businesses, your income is based on what you RECEIVED and when you received it. Your outgo is based on what you PAID and when you paid it. This is a cash accounting system.

Businesses that are incorporated and large enough to have a bookkeeper often use the accrual accounting, where their income is based on when the order from their customer or client is received, their outgo is based on when they place an order with a vendor, and other accounting matters can get complicated.

Smaller businesses may use the cash accounting system, the same one you use.

What this means is they may post an amount due to you in their records when you take the assignment, even though you won’t receive the funds for weeks.

Or, they may cut you a check in December, so it goes on that year’s books for them, but you don’t receive it until January.

Or their fiscal year may not be the same as the calendar year, so they may record the “expense” (what they owe you) in one calendar year and not pay you until the next one.

The 1099s are their report of their expenses, not your report of your income. You need your own records to know what you made and what you spent during the 12 calendar months. For your own business, it matters when you received money. For their 1099, it matters when they booked it.

So, no, you don’t rely on their 1099s. You have to report the income shown on them, but they aren’t your income for the year. If they don’t agree with your records, you can see whether any of the above apply. Or just report your income and expenses based on your records, which is what you’re supposed to do, in any case.

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This article is posted for information only. The preceding is not intended as legal advice or legal opinion. I am not an attorney and you should consult an attorney, a CPA, or another qualified tax professional if you need answers to specific questions. 

Where Should Notary Signing Agents Sign Up?

Where Should Notary Signing Agents Sign Up for Business?

Before you sign up anywhere, you need to be rock solid on your state’s notary laws and rules and anything related to them, as well as to have taken at least one or two classes and passed an exam from one of the nationally-recognized firms that will “certify” you to potential clients. The top two firms in the classes-and-certification business are the National Notary Association and Notary2Pro. There are pros and cons with each of them, and I will go into more details about each in upcoming articles here.

You may be able to skip the classes if you have a deep background in real estate (years in a title company office or as a real estate agent or a loan officer) or a related field (paralegal or legal secretary for an attorney whose practice focused on real estate and/or banking). You will still need the certification if you hope to be deemed acceptable by most potential clients (signing services or title companies) as most lenders require it now.

Once you are trained and certified, you are ready to look at the big three — 123notary, notarycafe, and notaryrotary.  Each of them has a directory where you can pay to list your services so people and companies can find you. It is worthwhile to be listed in all three of those directories. So, invest some money in passive marketing and start there.

(You may also want to claim your listing on  notarizethis.info and on Google. Those sites, as well as yelp and many other options, are beyond the scope of this article. Check back here for future articles about these other options.)

If you’re looking for companies to sign up with directly that will pay you to work (the first step on active marketing), there are lists of signing services and title companies on 123notary in their blog area and notaryrotary has a list called Signing Central. Also, if you take the classes from Notary2Pro (which costs more than $100 but less than $200), you can access their list, too.

Then there’s snapdocs, which other people can tell you about; and the National Notary Association, which I mentioned above.

There are other sites (which you can find via google) that offer lists, but I haven’t found any that tell you where their lists came from or when they were last updated. This is why the “big 3” are called that — their info is usually more reliable than other sites and they’ve been around for many years, even while the NSA business went through several upheavals.

These lists are the “low-hanging fruit,” the fields that every new NSA is told to harvest, and you’re likely to find that most of the opportunities there are already taken in many cases. Even so, you can start there and learn the ropes, get some experience, make some money. You may well find your best client there, who will sustain you for years to come; or your worst one, who will teach you a lesson that will save you untold misery by showing you what to never do again.

After a while you will find that you are running into too many slow days or that too many of your good clients seem to stop calling. This is because someone else has started picking that low-hanging fruit by offering a fee that is a bit lower than yours or by being a better marketer.

You don’t want to get into a price war with other NSAs. Believe me, you don’t, as it won’t end well for you.

(Working for less than the market rate is never a good idea, as there are always expenses and costs associated with being in business and you will not know what all of yours are until you have been doing this for a while.)

So, you need to expand your thinking and discover other places where potential clients may be found, especially after you get some experience with the low-hanging fruit ones. How to do that will be the subject of future articles.