Your Session

Signing happens on a short video call with the notary. This page covers choosing when it happens, what occurs on the call, and what reaches you afterwards.

Choosing a time

Most of the time, you pick your own. Your page offers the notary's available slots and you take one.

A fortnight of suggestions, thirty days of room. The times offered by default fall within a fortnight of the first session, because an act that drifts tends to keep drifting. If none of them suit, you can reach further out — but never past thirty days from the first session, which is the hard limit on the whole document. A date beyond it is refused rather than quietly moved.

You can change your mind, within limits. There is an allowance for moving your own session; it is not unlimited, because every change moves a slot in somebody's diary and the other parties are waiting on you.

You are moving only your own session. Nobody else's time changes, and neither does the deadline for the document.

When the choice is not offered

Some notaries take everybody in one sitting. If yours does, there is nothing for you to choose — the time is already set, and your page shows it. This is the notary's own arrangement rather than something the person who invited you decided.

Who has to be there

You and the notary. That is it.

You do not need the person who invited you to attend, and they do not need to be free when you are — that is the point of separate sessions. If you were asked to bring a witness, they join the same call as you.

You will see the names of the other people signing the document on your page. You will not see their email addresses or phone numbers, and they will not see yours.

What happens on the call

1. The notary confirms who you are. They have your verification result in front of them and will ask you to confirm some details on camera.
2. They check you have read the document and are signing freely — that nobody is standing over you, and that you understand you are executing it.
3. You give your name and consent. Before you can sign anything you type your full name as you want it to appear, and tick a statement confirming you have read the document and consent to signing it electronically. Your name is not filled in for you: what the person who invited you typed when booking is shown underneath so you can check the spelling, but the name that goes on the deed is the one you enter.
4. You sign. Your signature goes onto the document where the notary has placed your field. Some fields ask you to draw a signature or your initials; others ask you to type something, or to confirm a date. You are taken to each one in turn.
5. You confirm you are happy. See below — this is a separate step and it matters.
6. The session ends. Your part is done.

The whole thing is usually fifteen minutes and rarely more than forty-five.

Fields that are optional

Most fields have to be completed. Some are marked optional — the notary placed a box you may want rather than must use, and the screen says so: "This one is optional — you can leave it blank and still confirm below."

You can skip an optional field and still finish. The count of what you have left to do does not include them.

Marks may already be waiting for you

If the notary and the person who booked the notarisation laid out the document at an earlier sitting, your fields are already there when you arrive. You may have had an email before your session saying something is waiting for you to sign.

That email tells you nothing about what the document says — it says a mark is waiting and points you at your portal. You read the document itself through your own portal, where the copy is watermarked until the act is finished.

The notary can still add to or change what is marked for you, right up until you sign it.

Confirming you are happy with what you signed

When the notary has finished, they ask everybody who signed in that sitting — not just the person who booked it — whether they are happy. Your screen asks:

Are you happy with what you have signed?

Two answers, and neither is the "wrong" one:

• Yes, I am happy with my signing. Your confirmation is recorded and your signed fields are locked — nobody can move or remove them afterwards.
• No, something is wrong. You can say what is wrong, or leave it blank; you do not have to explain. Nothing you have signed is undone and the session does not end. The notary is told, and they will come back to you.

Only the marks you made are yours to approve. You are not being asked to approve the whole transaction or anybody else's signature — just that what you put on the document is what you meant to put there.

The notary cannot close the act while somebody on the call has not answered, and if they do close it without you, the record shows that they did.

If you signed nothing in your sitting, you are not asked — there is nothing to be satisfied about.

The session is recorded. All of it, by law — it is the evidence that the signing happened and that the notary saw you do it. The recording is not given to the other parties and it is not attached to the document; it is kept as part of the notarial record.

After you have signed

Your part is complete and nothing further is required from you.

You will get an email saying so, listing who is still to sign and when they are booked. It carries their names and their times and nothing else about them — what somebody else still has to do before they can appear is between them, the person who booked the notarisation, and the notary.

There is no document attached to that email, and there is nothing wrong with it. Until the last person has signed and the notary has sealed the document, no finished version exists — see the document.

When the act is complete you are emailed the sealed document and its certificate, whichever session you attended. Every party gets them.

Reminders, and what they mean

• Something is waiting for you to sign. Sent once, after a sitting at which the notary marked where you will sign. Nothing is needed from you before your own session — it is so you know a task is there.
• You have not chosen a time. Sent more than once if the silence continues. Choosing takes a minute and stops the reminders.
• The document is running out of time. Sent as the thirty days close in. If you get one of these, the whole notarisation is at risk, not just your part.

If you get a reminder for something you have already done, tell the person who invited you — do not just ignore it.

If you cannot make your session

Change it from your page if there is still time. If it is too late for that, tell the person who invited you as soon as you know.

If you miss a session that has already been paid for, that sitting is spent: the notary was there. What happens next is for the notary to arrange, and the cost of a further sitting falls on whoever missed it rather than on everybody.