Appearance
Availability & Fees
Setting your availability
Your availability determines which slots clients can book. Go to Dashboard → Settings → Availability.
You are not bookable until you set availability
If you have no active availability rules, you will not appear as bookable and clients cannot schedule a session with you — even when your profile is approved and accepting new bookings. We'll email you a reminder every few days until you set it. The reminders stop automatically as soon as you save your first availability rule (or if you pause new bookings while you're away).
The page has three sections: Slot Duration, Weekly Schedule and Date Overrides.
Slot duration
One setting for your whole practice: how long each bookable appointment is. Choose it first — it decides the length of every slot a client sees, so changing it later reshapes your whole schedule.
Slots run from 15 to 30 minutes, in 5-minute steps. Thirty minutes is the platform maximum: a notarisation sitting rarely needs longer, and a longer slot is time taken out of your own day for every booking, not just the ones that use it. The default for a new practice is 25 minutes.
Weekly schedule
Each day of the week has a toggle and, once switched on, one or more time blocks.
- Switch on the day you want to work.
- Click the + on that day to add a time block.
- Set the start and end time for the block.
- Repeat for each day, adding more than one block to a day where you want a break in the middle — a morning window and an afternoon window, say.
- Click Save Schedule.
Until you save, the page shows the schedule as unsaved and the button stays active; once saved it reads Schedule up to date. There is no separate "rule" to create and no wizard — the days are always there, and switching one on is what makes it bookable.
Save each rule
Each availability rule is saved on its own — click Save after adding or editing every rule (including any change to the session duration). A rule you add but don't save is not stored, so double-check it appears in your list before leaving the page.
TIP
Only slots that fall within your availability rules appear on your public calendar. Clients cannot book outside these windows.
Cannot remove a rule with active bookings
If a client has a pending or confirmed booking that falls within an availability window, the platform will prevent you from removing or deactivating that rule until the booking is resolved (completed or cancelled). This protects clients from losing confirmed sessions.
To remove the rule, first cancel the affected appointment(s) from Dashboard → Appointments — the reassignment flow will find another notary for the client automatically.
Pausing new bookings
If you are going on leave or need a break without deactivating your profile:
- Go to Dashboard → Settings → Availability.
- Toggle Accept New Bookings to Off.
You will be hidden from search results immediately. Existing confirmed bookings are not affected. Toggle it back on when you are ready.
Automatic session reassignment
When a notary cancels a confirmed session at short notice, NotariseIt automatically searches for the next best available notary to reassign the session to — ensuring the client's booking goes ahead without disruption.
By default, all notaries are eligible to receive these automatically reassigned sessions. If you are matched, you will receive an email setting out the fee, the documents and the time, and you can hand the session back if it does not suit you.
What you are paid. An assignment carries the fee the booking already charges — the amount the notary who booked it would have received. It is not re-priced at your rate. That may be a little above what you charge for the same documents, or a little below; you are told the figure before you commit, and you are free to decline it.
Which assignments reach you. Not every unclaimed booking. The platform compares what the booking charges against what you would have charged for the same documents, and only offers it when the two are close — within a percentage the administrator sets. So an assignment far outside your usual range should be unusual.
To opt out of automatic reassignment:
- Go to Dashboard → Settings → Availability.
- Under Automatic Session Reassignment, toggle to Off.
When opted out, you will never receive a session through automatic reassignment. You will only receive bookings that clients make directly with you through the platform.
WARNING
Opting out reduces your earning opportunities. Automatically reassigned sessions are paid at the full session fee and are a direct benefit of being on the platform.
Declining one assignment is not the same as opting out
You do not have to choose between taking everything and taking nothing. Handing back a single session you did not book costs you nothing and does not affect your standing — see Handing a session back. Opt out only if you never want assignments at all.
Who can book you
Every client who books you holds a current verified identity check. It is a condition of booking on NotariseIt, not a setting you turn on: a client cannot book a session or pay for one without it.
You still make your own decision on camera under s.6(3)(c) of the Notaries Public Act 2023 — the platform's check is evidence, not a substitute for your judgement. What it prevents is discovering a problem after an hour of your diary has been reserved.
The Who Can Book You setting that used to live here has been removed. It let you require verified clients while other notaries took anyone; with verification required of everyone it described a choice that no longer exists.
Full detail, including what "current" means for a client whose verification has lapsed, is in Identity Verification.
TIP
If you receive an automatically reassigned session and cannot attend, use Hand this session back on the appointment as soon as you can — not Cancel. The two look similar and are not: handing back an assignment is free, cancelling a session a client booked with you is flagged. See Handing a session back.
Setting your fees
Fees are set per document type. Go to Dashboard → Settings → Document Types & Fees to manage them.
The platform enforces a minimum fee of ₦5,000 per document. This reflects the lowest statutory rate in the Second Schedule to the Notaries Public Act 2023 (s.10) — the fee for attestation to any other document and each additional document in a session. You cannot set a fee below ₦5,000.
Fee structure
| Pricing model | How it works |
|---|---|
| Flat fee | A fixed amount per document, regardless of length |
| Per page | A fee multiplied by the number of pages (client enters page count at booking) |
You choose the pricing model when configuring each document type.
Setting booking terms
If you require clients to agree to specific terms before booking (e.g. document preparation requirements, cancellation terms, or a confidentiality notice):
- Go to Dashboard → Settings → Booking Terms.
- Enter your terms in the text field.
- Click Save.
Clients will be required to accept these terms before completing a booking with you.
Service charge and VAT
The platform adds a service charge (configured by NotariseIt) and 7.5% VAT on top of your fee. These are charged to the client — your payout is based on your notarisation fee minus the platform service charge only.
The full fee breakdown is shown to the client on the booking screen and in the confirmation email.
Signatories book into your diary directly
Where you accept separate signing times, the people named on a client's document choose their own slots from your published availability — the same diary, without going back through the client.
Two things follow:
They book inside the act's window. A signatory cannot pick a date beyond the act's thirty-day ceiling, so nothing lands in your diary against a document that has already run out of time.
An unpaid slot is held, then released. A signatory paying their own attendance fee holds the time while the payment is outstanding. If it stays unpaid the slot comes back to you automatically and they choose another.
If you would rather take everybody in one sitting, you can say so in your settings. Clients booking with you are told before they pay, and their signatories are given the time rather than a choice of times.