Notary Public Underwriters Blog
What do I do with my record book (journal) entry when a notarization is cancelled (not completed)?
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- Published: March 13, 2023
Great question! Yes, a Notary must occasionally stop a notarization because of an issue that would prevent notarizing in compliance with state law. Or, perhaps the person requesting your services decides at the last minute to stop the notarization for some reason related to the document’s contents or effect.
Your Notary record book is very useful for documenting when a notarization was not completed. Writing this information in your book will refresh your memory if for some reason, you are later questioned about what happened.
If a notarization is stopped after customer information is already written into a record book entry, we recommend “cancelling” the entry by drawing a single diagonal line through it, and placing your initials and the date on that line. Use that entry’s “Comment” space, or the very next entry in your record book, to write your own notes about why the notarization was not completed. Reasons might include, for example, “I stopped the notarization; customer did not have satisfactory identification”; or “Customer decided to stop the notarization,” and so on. Keep any notes you make about a stopped notarization brief and factual.
If you need to use a new record book entry to record why the notarization was stopped, tie the two entries together with a note such as, “Entry number (x) and (x) are related.”
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