The Attendance Fee

You may owe nothing at all. Check your own page first — it says plainly whether anything is due from you, and for most signatories the answer is no.

Who pays

The person who booked the notarisation chooses, at the time they book, who covers each signatory's attendance fee. They can cover everybody, nobody, or some people and not others.

• If they covered you, there is nothing to pay and no card details to enter. You will never see a payment screen.
• If they did not, you pay your own attendance fee before your session, from your page.

If you were expecting to be covered and your page says otherwise, that is a conversation with the person who invited you, not with us. They made the choice and they can discuss it with you; we cannot change it on their behalf.

What the fee is for

It pays for the notary's attendance at your session — their time in the room with you, on the record, conducting your appearance.

It is not the notarisation fee. The notarisation is charged once for the whole document, however many sessions the signing takes, and it is paid by the person who booked it. Your attendance fee is a separate, smaller amount that exists because your session is a separate sitting of the notary's day.

What it does not buy

The fee buys an appearance, not an outcome. If you appear and the document turns out to be defective, or somebody else declines, or the act runs out of time, the notary still attended your session and that sitting is still spent.

When you have to pay it

Before your session. A signatory whose fee is unpaid cannot be admitted to the call, and a slot held against an unpaid fee does not hold indefinitely — if it goes unpaid it is released and somebody else can book that time.

If your slot is released you have not lost your place on the document. You choose another time, within the same deadline as everybody else.

You will be reminded if the fee is outstanding. The reminders stop when it is paid.

What you are charged

The amount is shown on your page before you pay anything, in full, with whatever tax and processing charges apply set out separately. There are no charges added afterwards and nothing recurring — it is a single payment for a single session.

You are given a receipt. Keep it: it names the document reference, which is what you would quote if you ever needed to ask about the payment.

If you have to appear again

If a further session is needed because you missed the one you were booked for, the attendance fee for that further sitting is yours.

If a further session is needed for a reason that is not anybody's fault — the notary rearranging, or the document being reset — you are not charged again.

Nobody is ever charged twice for somebody else's absence. The person who missed a sitting pays for the replacement of it.

Refunds

If the notary cannot complete the notarisation, everything paid comes back — including the attendance fees for sessions that were actually held. The notary could not finish; nobody who paid should be out of pocket for it.

If the document simply runs out of time, nothing comes back. The sessions that happened, happened: the notary attended them and the fee paid for that attendance. This is why the thirty-day deadline is worth taking seriously, and why the reminders are sent.

If you decline before your session, and you have already paid, you are refunded the attendance fee for a sitting that never took place.