Guide
When a signed closing package is lost in shipping, the title company should confirm it is really lost, tell the lender before anyone else, and let the lender decide what has to be signed again before booking the re-sign as a new appointment. The tracking record and the scanbacks decide most of what follows, including who pays.
A lost package is expensive when it happens: a second signing, a delayed funding, and a borrower who has to give up another evening. Two things on the original order shape how bad it gets: whether the notary sent scanbacks, and whether the request spelled out where the documents go and on whose label. For that part, see what to include in a notary signing request.
Start with the tracking number. Ask the notary for it, along with the drop-off receipt, if it is not already on the file. The tracking history usually tells you which problem you have. If it shows the package delivered, the package is probably in your building: check the mailroom, the front desk, a coworker's desk, and any other office whose address could have been on the label. If tracking stopped at a carrier facility, the package is delayed or lost inside the carrier, and the carrier needs to trace it. If there is no scan at all, the package may never have been dropped off, or it went out under a different number. Give a stalled package a business day before you call it lost, unless a funding or rate-lock deadline means you cannot wait. Plenty of late packages turn up.
The lender. The lender decides what happens next: whether the loan can still fund on time, which documents have to be signed again, and whether any dates in the package now have to change. Tell them what you know and what you do not, including the tracking status and whether you hold the scanbacks. Next, tell the notary, because they may have the receipt or a scan you need and may be asked to go back out. Then agree with the lender on who contacts the borrower and what they will say, so the borrower hears it once, from one person, with a plan attached.
Sometimes the whole package, sometimes only part of it. The lender sets the answer, not the title company or the notary. Lenders commonly need wet-ink originals of certain documents, such as the promissory note and the mortgage or deed of trust that gets recorded, and may accept copies of others. Some will redraw the full package with new dates. Do not promise the borrower a short re-sign before the lender has said which documents it needs. Tell a borrower it is two pages, then hand them the whole stack, and they have a fair complaint.
For some purposes, often yes. For the originals that have to be recorded or held, usually no. A scanback lets the lender review the signed package before the originals arrive, and some lenders will fund from it, which is the reason many orders ask for one. Whether a scanned copy can stand in for a missing original is a question for the lender, and for the county recorder where recording is involved. What the scanbacks always give you is proof of what was signed, which pages were complete, and when. That record settles a lot of arguments about what went into the envelope. Our guide to scanbacks covers how notaries produce them.
As a new signing. It gets its own appointment, its own fresh documents from the lender, and its own request to the notary. Ask the original notary first if you can, because the borrower has already met them and is more likely to say yes to a familiar face. Say in the request that this is a re-sign of a lost package, which documents are being signed, and how the new set travels back. Never ask a notary to date a new notarization to the original signing day or to reuse an old one. A careful notary will refuse, and they would be right to. How the new notarizations are completed is for the notary to decide under their own commissioning rules. Book the borrower at a time that suits them, not the office. They are giving up a second evening for a problem they did not cause.
There is no single industry rule. It usually follows who had the package when it went missing, and what your agreement with the notary says. If the tracking shows the notary never dropped it off, or used the wrong label, many agencies treat the cost as the notary's. If the carrier lost it, the carrier's claim process may cover the shipping, but rarely the cost of the second signing. Whoever's account paid for the label normally files that claim. If the package was delivered and lost inside your office, the cost is yours. Look at the tracking record before you assign blame. A notary who did everything right and is then docked for it will remember, and so will the notaries they talk to. A notary who goes back out for a re-sign that was not their fault should be paid for it like any other signing.
Most of the prevention sits on the agency's side of the order. Send a prepaid return label billed to your own account, so you can trace the package and file a claim without waiting on anyone. Ask the notary to send the tracking number at drop-off, and put it on the file the same day. Ask for scanbacks on orders where the lender allows them, so you hold a copy before the originals travel. Schedule with the carrier's cutoff in mind: a signing that ends after the last drop-off time ships the next day, and a funding date has to allow for that. And give incoming packages a receiving routine, so a delivered envelope gets logged and opened the day it arrives instead of sitting in a stack.
No. NotaryBoard does not ship, carry, track, or store documents. There is no carrier integration and no tracking-number field. What it does is record how each signing's documents move, such as shipped back with a provided label, returned to an office, or printed from eDocs and shipped, along with the order number and any notes, so the notary knows the route before they accept. For a re-sign, you create a new signing request, send it to a notary on your roster who is free at that hour, and it is booked when they accept. The tracking number, the carrier claim, and the conversation with the lender stay with your team.
From Arron Johnson's other sites