Signing & Certificates

Placing signing fields

Before the client signs, you set up the signing fields on the document:

1. In the session sidebar, click the document you want to work on. It opens in the main panel headed Place Signing Fields.
2. Pick who the field is for from the participant list, then choose the field type:
   • Signature — where the client, witness, or you sign
   • Initials — for page-by-page initials
   • Date — auto-filled with the session date
   • Seal — where your digital seal is applied
3. Click the document where the field should sit. Drag to reposition, or use the corner handle to resize.

There is no Save step. Each field is saved the moment you place it, and a field you delete is gone immediately. This is deliberate — a session is a live event, and an unsaved layout that a browser refresh could discard is not something to be holding during one.

Documents open in this mode until every participant field has been signed; after that the same document opens ready for your seal instead.

You can place fields for multiple signatories — the client, any witnesses, and yourself.

---

The signing flow

Once fields are placed, the session proceeds through the signing steps in sequence.

Client signature

The client sees the document with their assigned fields highlighted in blue. They can sign in two ways:

Typed signature

1. The client types their full name.
2. They choose a style from five font options and set the size.
3. They confirm their intent and click Sign — the signature image is placed on the field.

The styles offered are selected for stroke weight rather than for how they look on screen, so they survive printing and photocopying. A name too long for the field is scaled down to fit rather than being clipped.

Handwritten signature via QR code

1. Toggle Require handwritten on the field in the signing field editor.
2. During the session, the client clicks Show QR Code in their signing panel.
3. They scan it on their phone — a handwriting pad opens.
4. They draw their signature and tap Submit.
5. The signature is transmitted back to the session in real time.

Witness signature

Witnesses follow the same signing process as clients, on their assigned fields.

---

Your signature and seal

In the session you place three things, and there is nothing to configure while you are in there. Each is one click in the sidebar, then one click on the document where it should go.

Stamp	What it places
Seal	Your registered digital seal
Signature	Your saved handwritten signature
Printed Name	Your name as commissioned, taken from your profile

Set your signature up once, beforehand, in Digital Signature Setup. Set your seal up in Digital Seal Setup.

Nothing is typed

Your name comes from your profile on every stamp, so it cannot be misspelled and cannot be left blank. During testing a live document was stamped "Notry" — a typo in a box the notary should never have had to fill in, on an instrument that identifies them.

Placing a stamp

1. Click Seal, Your Signature or Your Printed Name in the sidebar.
2. Click the document where it should sit.
3. Drag to reposition, or use the corner handle to resize.

Your own stamps are applied immediately — there is no pending state for them, and clients see them as applied.

If you have no signature saved, that card tells you so and points you to your profile. You can still complete the session with the seal and your printed name.

The seal is the commit point

Applying the seal is the notarial act. It is checked first — identity confirmed, every participant field signed, dates complete — and if anything is outstanding the seal is refused and nothing is placed on the document. You will see the reason and what to fix. A refusal never leaves a seal on the page.

---

Your notary seal

The seal always uses your registered digital seal PNG — the image generated from your Supreme Court Number (SCN) during Digital Seal Setup. You place it the same way as your signature and printed name: click Seal in the sidebar, then click the document where it should go. See Placing a stamp above.

Where you put it is your judgement. Wherever it goes, it must be visible on the finished document.

Recording must be live before you can seal

The platform refuses the seal unless the session is being recorded. Recording starts on its own when the session begins and you cannot turn it off, so in practice this only bites when the recording has actually dropped — in which case the recording status bar will already be telling you so.

The reason is not procedural. The seal is the commit point of the notarial act, and an act committed with no A/V recording is void: the Notaries Public Act 2023 requires audio and video throughout, and Reg 14(3) requires six years of A/V retention. The recording is the only artefact evidencing the act and the only one submissible under s.6(5).

If the seal is refused for this reason, click Restart recording in the status bar and try again — see If the recording stops unexpectedly. This safeguard can be lifted by a super-admin only, and only during a confirmed video-provider outage.

INFO

Your seal image is fetched automatically from your profile each time you join a session. If you have updated your seal (see Digital Seal Setup), the new version is used from the next session onwards.

---

Document finalisation

There is no separate finalisation step and no Finalise Document button. Finalisation is part of completing the session: when you click Complete Session, the platform tells you plainly that it "will finalise all signed documents, generate the notarial certificate, and send copies to all parties", and then does exactly that for every document at once.

What happens to each document at that point:

1. The actual signature images are embedded into the final PDF.
2. A TSA timestamp (RFC 3161) is embedded into the signature itself — a cryptographic proof, issued by an independent timestamping authority, of the exact date and time of signing. Because it covers the signature rather than sitting beside the file, any PDF reader can check it, and the signature stays verifiable after your signing certificate eventually expires.
3. The document is locked and cannot be modified.

---

Certificate generation

When you click Complete Session, the platform automatically:

1. Generates a notarial certificate PDF containing:
   • Your name, Supreme Court Number (SCN), date called to the Bar, and commission number, date and state
   • Client name and document details
   • Session ID and jurisdiction classification
   • West Africa Time (WAT) timestamp
   • SHA-256 hash of the notarised document — the sealed PDF, not the original upload, so a relying party can hash the file they hold and compare. Where no hash was recorded the certificate says so explicitly.
   • Your digital seal (embedded)
   • A QR code linking to the public verification page
2. Signs the certificate with the platform's RSA-PSS key.
3. Stores the certificate in secure cloud storage.
4. Emails the certificate to you, the client, and any witnesses.

---

Public certificate verification

Anyone can verify a certificate at any time — no account required:

1. Scan the QR code on the certificate, or
2. Visit www.notariseit.com/verify and enter the certificate ID.

The verification page confirms authenticity, the document hash, your SCN and name, and the jurisdiction of the notarisation.

---

Evidence bundle

For sessions that may require formal submission (e.g. court filings):

1. Go to Sessions → [Completed Session] → Download Evidence Bundle.
2. The bundle is a ZIP containing the signed document, the notarial certificate, and the session audit trail.

---

Chief Registrar submissions

Under s.6(5) of the Notaries Public Act 2023, NotariseIt automatically emails a copy of the notarised documents and certificate to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court on your behalf when you complete a session.

You can view submission status, toggle opt-in, and manually trigger sends from Dashboard → CR Submissions in the sidebar.

See Chief Registrar Submissions for the full guide.