For a VA notary who only wants to do in-person enotarizations, and isn't going to do online enotarizations, that electronic record of notarial acts seems to me like a big problem.
There is a VA enotarization assurance standard at
https://commonwealth.virginia.gov/media/2090/VAe-NotarizationStandard2013Version10.pdf
On the subject of the electronic record of notarial acts, it says in part:
"(b) Not allow a record entry to be deleted or altered in content or sequence by the electronic notary or any other person after a record of the electronic notarization is entered and stored."
OK, so that leaves out Excel or Word, or pretty much any other app that resides solely on your personal computer without communicating over the internet, because all of those allow the notary to change entries later. (Maybe there is a system that doesn't make it easy, but if it doesn't get a secure timestamp from a reliable third party, there is no way to be sure the notary didn't alter the record.)
If you can find such an application, can you be sure the company will still be around 15 years from now, when Granny has died, the family is going through the papers and the land records at the county courthouse, and one of the heirs says "wait a minute, Granny told me last month that she still owned that hunting lodge, but this deed says she sold it...."
Will you have to pay the company that hosts the journal app every month for the rest of your life to make sure you can still access your journal, in case you ever need to defend yourself?
There are ways around this, involving the notary electronically signing every journal entry and getting a secure time stamp, but I'll send a Starbucks gift certificate for a coffee to the first VA notary who can explain how to do that. They sure won't find it explained on the VA SOS site.
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