Guide
Updated
A title company should schedule notaries for the end-of-month closing rush by booking each notary as soon as the closing date is set, not when the documents are ready, and by planning the last days of the month around how many signings each notary can really carry. Every other office in your market is booking the same notaries that week, and the offices that call first get the best ones.
Most month-end trouble is decided in the middle of the month: who is on your roster in each county, and whether you know their limits. For building that list, see how to build and manage your own notary roster. For the per-notary math, see how many loan signings a notary can do in one day.
Several reasons land on the same few days. Borrowers are often told that closing late in the month means less prepaid interest due at the table, so they pick the last week. Moves line up with lease end dates and school calendars. Rate locks and contract deadlines tend to be written around month-end. Lenders and agents work to monthly numbers too. Federal Title, a title company, writes that the last day of the month is always the most popular closing date and calls June 30 typically the busiest closing day of the year, with Fridays busy for both title companies and lenders. Every other office in your market is having the same week, and that includes the notaries you all share.
As soon as the closing date and time are set. Do not wait until the documents are ready. In a normal week you can usually find someone the day before. In the last week of the month the notaries everyone wants fill up first, and by the time you call around you are choosing from whoever is left. Book the person and the time slot early, then tell the notary when you expect the documents and how they will arrive. If the time moves, change the booking the same day so the hold you placed does not block a slot the notary could have sold to someone else. Many notaries publish their own minimum notice for new signings, so read it before you count on a same-day yes.
Fewer than the appointment count suggests. A loan signing usually runs about an hour at the table, but it occupies two to three hours of the notary's day once you add printing, both drives, checking the pages, and the trip to drop off the package. Our guide on how many loan signings a notary can do in a day walks through that math. A worked example, with assumptions stated: if you have 20 closings on the 30th in one county, and a realistic day for your notaries there is three or four signings with the late-afternoon and evening slots most in demand, you need five to seven notaries free that day, not two who say they can do ten. Count your roster by county against that number in the middle of the month, while there is still time to add people.
Decide that before the week starts. Add notaries to your roster in a quiet week, and give each new one a simple signing first so you know how they work before the 30th. Check whether anyone in your own office is a commissioned notary who can take an in-office signing when the borrower can come to you. Ask the lender and the agents whether a closing can move earlier in the day, or to the day before, when the parties are willing. And keep a signing service as a legitimate overflow option for the counties or hours you cannot cover. A signing service supplies its own notaries and coordination for a fee, and for the closing you could not otherwise staff it is often the right call. Both models are legitimate. They fit different problems.
Because the lender's side is crowded too. Closing disclosures, last-minute changes, and funding conditions all compete for the same people, and packages that usually arrive the day before start arriving hours before the signing. Notary forums have long threads from signing agents who got documents a couple of hours before an appointment. You cannot fix the lender's queue, but you can stop it from becoming the notary's problem without warning. Put the expected document time on the request. Tell the notary the moment it slips. Avoid booking a late-docs signing into the tail of a notary's packed evening, where one delay pushes every appointment after it. And agree at acceptance what happens if the documents miss a set cutoff, so nobody is negotiating that at 6 p.m. Our guide on what to include in a notary signing request covers the rest of the order.
Not on its own. The closing date belongs to the contract, the lender, and the parties. What the title company can do is offer an earlier date when one is open and explain the tradeoff plainly. Federal Title's advice to buyers is that closing a day or two early adds a little interest and usually makes for a calmer closing, and that a Thursday is often less busy than a Friday. Some agents and buyers will take that. Many will not, and that is their call. Plan for the dates you actually get rather than the ones you would prefer.
Mostly small things that a calm week would absorb. A notary running behind on back-to-back signings misses an initial. A package goes out after the carrier's last drop-off, so it ships a day later than the funding date assumed. A time change reaches the borrower but not the notary. The checks are plain ones. Ask for scanbacks where the lender allows them, so a missing signature surfaces the same night instead of when the originals arrive. Schedule with the carrier cutoff in mind. Send every time change to the notary in writing, through the same channel the original request used. And look at each notary's whole day before you add one more signing to it.
It helps with the scheduling half, not the capacity half. NotaryBoard shows which notaries on your own roster are free or busy at a given hour, using free/busy from their calendars, never event titles, locations, or attendees. You can filter by county, send a signing to one notary or to several at once, and the first to accept gets it, with a hold placed on their calendar so nobody books them twice. Notaries get the request by email and text, and can accept by replying to the text. What it does not do: it does not supply notaries, so when everyone on your roster is booked it cannot find you someone new. It also does not carry, ship, or track documents. The roster, the backup plan, and the conversation with the lender are still yours.
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