Posted by Eric Andrist on 8/20/13 1:26pm
Msg #481197

What fee do you put in journal for loan signings?

So when you do a loan signing and you're paid a lump sum, what fee do you enter in your journal and for accounting purposes? I try to do $10 per, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. For instance, if you're paid $125 for the job, and there's 10 notarizations, that would leave $25 for the rest of the signing. But what if there's 14 notarizations?

I know some people charge $10 per (and a higher total fee) no matter what, but that's just not feasible as a newbie in the saturated notary field in Los Angeles!

Reply by Marian_in_CA on 8/20/13 1:44pm
Msg #481205

$10 per signature per line.... the maximum allowed per state law. The rest is itemized in my accounting software in an invoice that I reference in the journal notes.

If, in my journal, I note more than $10 per signature, or if my receipts or invoices note I charge more than $10 per signature, one could theoretically come back at me and accuse me of overcharging them.

Signing services and TCs may never see my itemized invoices, but I always itemize each job, down to the signature and printing fees, etc.

Reply by Marian_in_CA on 8/20/13 1:48pm
Msg #481206

BTW.... if you do 14 notarizations and only charge $125... you're probably getting ripped off. Just sayin'. State law says we can charge up to $10 a signature. You can always charge less....of course... but these companies know darn well they're getting a bargain. A 14 signature package is at least $155 - $200, worth, IMO.

In those case, though, you can always prorate the price per signature. So, let's say you only charge $5.00 per signature.... that's $70 for the signature fees and $55 id left over for printing, travel, courier, etc.

Reply by Eric Andrist on 8/20/13 1:57pm
Msg #481211

Well yeah, it seems most people think that accepting lower fees is getting ripped off and that we shouldn't do it. I just can't afford to turn down work as long as I'm still making money on the job.

I don't know how to get past that. I have asked for more money a couple of times lately and they just passed on me.

Reply by MW/VA on 8/20/13 1:53pm
Msg #481209

I would think you only put "notary fees" in your journal, no

signing agent fees. I keep my accounting separate from my journal.

Reply by Eric Andrist on 8/20/13 2:00pm
Msg #481213

Re: I would think you only put "notary fees" in your journal, no

Yes, sorry that was a little ambiguous. Notary fees in journal, but then I was wondering about accounting separately, as I know some people take advantage of the notarizations being non-taxable income.

I wasn't sure if say it was a $125 job and you had 10 notarizations, if it might look odd to the IRS or someone that the cost of the signing agent fee portion would vary so greatly.

Reply by SheilaSJCA on 8/20/13 2:08pm
Msg #481218

Re: I would think you only put "notary fees" in your journal, no

Eric, the notary fees are NOT-non-taxable income. They are exempt from self-employment tax. That is not the same thing. You should get with a bookkeepr, CPA, enrolled agent or some other professional to make sure you know how to report your income from your loan signing business.

Reply by Marian_in_CA on 8/20/13 2:13pm
Msg #481221

Re: I would think you only put "notary fees" in your journal, no

They are only exempt from the SE tax if you choose claim it. There are many, many good reasons NOT to claim the exemption. If you do, of course, you need to have it properly documented... but in CA, it needs to be properly document anyway.

Reply by Eric Andrist on 8/20/13 2:23pm
Msg #481224

Re: I would think you only put "notary fees" in your journal, no

Sorry, that's what I meant.....I had a long day yesterday and still haven't quite recouped.

But you're right, I do need to get with a bookkeeper, I'm just not making enough money yet to afford to do that.

Reply by Marian_in_CA on 8/20/13 2:30pm
Msg #481227

I think we all feel your pain there, Eric. n/m

Reply by Linda_H/FL on 8/20/13 2:31pm
Msg #481228

If money is tight for you (as it is for many of us)

a pen, paper and a calculator is all you need to keep good books. You don't need to hire a bookkeeper. If you have a few extra dollars, a green ledger pad will do the trick - if you can't do that, plain paper, draw columns and label the columns however you want your expenses to be itemized - cell phone, utilities, supplies, insurance, advertising, memberships, training and education, licensing, etc etc.

Technology is a wonderful thing - but we got a lot done with pen and paper well before technology hit the market. I still use green ledger for expenses, blank paper for income broken down into 5 columns - date, payor/file, total paid, notary fees, additional fees. My copies of my invoices are broken down at the top - a $150 invoice with 8 notarizations is noted as 80/70 - $80 notary fees, $70 other fees. I AM my bookkeeper.

Reply by GOLDGIRL/CA on 8/20/13 3:11pm
Msg #481239

My notary fee for loan signing is $0 (zero)

I do not charge to notarize ... it's free. My fee is for time, travel, car expenses, printing, paper, etc.

I do practically no GNW ... but the little I've done is for friends and some military people who are friends of my Air Force son and, of course, I wouldn't charge them anything ... even if I had out of pocket expenses.

Reply by JanetK_CA on 8/20/13 5:26pm
Msg #481281

There are lots of different ways of looking at this. With your examples, you could show $100 for notary fees in your journal - and if you want, you could show the additional $25 as "signing" (or whatever). If that is for two people, you could show $50 for each. If you use one line per notarization, just fill the lines until you hit the maximum you are paid, then put $0 for the rest.

BTW, what you can't legally do is exempt against self-employment tax more than you earned per assignment. So in the example where you did 10 notarizations, but were paid $125, you can't exempt the $25 above the notary fee you earned and you can't use it to offset other jobs where you may have done 6 notarizations and earned $140. You should keep track of each one separately.

I track all of that on Excel spreadsheet that I created myself years ago. They are the most elegant thing in the world, but they work for tracking this info. I also have columns for business mileage.

Reply by JeffC/CA on 8/21/13 10:43am
Msg #481373

My routine is similar to others' here. I charge CA max. fee of $10 for each signature. I put $10 for each notary act in my journal. I make a note of the total fees charged in notes section of journal. I make an invoice (Quickbooks) itemizing each charge. Total number of notarizations X $10, subtract that figure from total fees. The remainder is for travel fees. I usually don't itemize printing or faxback fees, I just sum everything into travel fees. This keeps the invoice simple. This is the same invoice I send to SS or TC. I don't want to send them something different fearing that it may look as if I'm keeping multiple books.

Regarding if the number of notarizations X $10 is more than the total fees charged, I just divide the total fees by the number of notarizations and put this figure for each entry in my journal. If it's a $125 signing with 14 notarizations, then the fee per notarization is $8.93. No travel fee, and I indicate the 14 notarized signatures on the invoice @ $8.9285 (Quickbooks does this for me) with a total 0f $125.

If the IRS ever asks, I'll just tell them that I negotiate my fees based on lots of factors, including how the market is, whether I'm busy, how far, time of day, size of package, number of signers, trust or POA signing, reverse mtg, piggyback loan, how badly I want to work with a particular company, my relationship with a particular company, volume discount, etc. I will ask how many notarizations when negotiating, but they don't always get it right, or just don't know because they don't have the docs, yet. The IRS doesn't get to say how I do it. I charge the max per signature I can get. By the way, I sometimes charge much less for GNW where there are a whole bunch of signatures, such as for an attorney, signing as fast as we can go. Ive done 36 signatures for a flat fee of 180.00. It took a little over an hour. Production line style. If I want to charge $5.00/sig. to get the job, so be it.

Hope this helps.

Reply by JanetK_CA on 8/21/13 2:41pm
Msg #481431

Another very workable option for journal record keeping.

BTW, the IRS shouldn't have any interest in how we calculate our fees or what we charge. The only things, imo, we need to be concerned about for them is that we do report all income and that we don't exempt from SE tax calculations any more than the allowed chargeable amount *per assignment*. That's a completely separate calculation than what we charge except for the fact that we can't exclude more than we're paid on any given transaction.

As for calculating fees (for any newbies out there), there are two primary ways people approach that. The first, most used for GNW, is the flat legally allowed amount per signature (or per notarization, depending on state law), plus something to cover everything else that's not part of the actual notarization. I've copied Marian's idea of lumping that all under the title of "mobile service", as that covers more than just travel - and there can be different factors in play in every situation.

The other method, of course, is the flat rate we usually use for pricing a loan signing (or other RE related transaction). When you consider that the actual notarizations we do as part of those assignments represent a very small portion of the whole task, it makes lots of sense. What doesn't make a lot of sense to me, is to confuse the two. I just price it all one way or all the other way. And like JeffC, I've done lots of notarizations at a flat rate with an attorney. They usually already have my name and signer's name typed in, with the correct certificate(s), so it's easy and fast.

Again, if you're going to take the SE Tax exemption, you do need to keep track of that separately from your total fee, but not to exceed what you're paid, per transaction.