Journal & Record-Keeping for PA Notaries

TL;DR

Four rules cover most of what RULONA says about the journal:

Contemporaneous. Every notarial act gets an entry written as the act happens, not at end-of-day. Even free or waived-fee acts.
Complete. Six required fields per entry (date/time, type of act, document description, signer’s name and address, ID method, fee). No blank spaces, no blank lines between entries.
No Social Security numbers — at all. Under the March 28, 2026 final rule (4 Pa. Code § 167.32(d)), any part of an SSN is prohibited — including the last four digits older guidance allowed. Dates/places of birth, full license numbers, biometrics, and other PII are also banned.
Custody for life, then deliver. The journal is your exclusive property while commissioned. Within 30 days of your commission expiring, resigning, or being revoked, you deliver it to the recorder of deeds in the county where you last maintained an office (57 Pa.C.S. § 319(e)). The practical retention horizon is ten years — the same period RULONA sets for RON audio-visual recordings (§ 306.1(e)) — because that’s how far back litigation on a notarized document can plausibly reach.

Skip any of these and you hand DOS everything it needs to discipline you, and give an opposing attorney a free evidentiary win.

Why the journal matters — it’s not paperwork, it’s evidence

The notary certificate is self-authenticating in court

Under Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence 902, a notarized signature is self-authenticating — admissible without the notary taking the stand to lay foundation. The Superior Court made the point explicit in Commonwealth v. Magliocco, where a notarized signature on a fraudulent application was treated as probative evidence of the defendant’s presence, identity, and intent without separate authentication.

When your notarization is later dragged into a divorce, foreclosure, estate fight, or fraud prosecution, the certificate itself is evidence. The journal is the contemporaneous record that tells the court whether the certificate is accurate. If the journal says the signer was Jane Doe, she produced a PA driver’s license, and the fee was $5, the certificate holds. Without an entry — or with one that contradicts the certificate — the presumption of regularity erodes fast.

Absence of a journal is an aggravating factor

In In re Lori S. Sobol (DOS, November 2022), a Pittsburgh notary voluntarily surrendered her commission after DOS findings of notarizing without personal appearance and failing to maintain a journal. The missing journal did not create the underlying problem, but it meant there was no contemporaneous record to rebut the allegations and no way to narrow the investigation. The 2024 bulletins repeat the pattern: stayed suspensions, $1,500 administrative penalties, and mandatory education, with missing or incomplete journals cited as a secondary violation in almost every order.

The apex is Commonwealth v. Schell (Phila. Ct. of Common Pleas, 2025) — a 250-count indictment against a Germantown notary for her alleged role in a deed-fraud ring that stole 21 Philadelphia homes (Philadelphia DA press release). A well-kept journal is one of the few tools a notary has to distinguish a careless mistake from a willful conspiracy.

Anyone can demand to inspect it

Under 4 Pa. Code § 167.36(a), any person may request to inspect the journal. The request can be oral. The only limit is that the inspection must occur in your presence. Certified copies are available on request under § 167.36(b) and 57 Pa.C.S. § 319(g.1), and you have 15 days to produce them. A notary who cannot produce the journal on a lawful request has violated the statute, regardless of what the underlying notarization looked like.

Required fields — the checklist

Per 57 Pa.C.S. § 319(c), supplemented by 4 Pa. Code § 167.32, every entry must contain:

Date and time of the act. Calendar date plus actual time — not “morning.”
Type of act. One of the six enumerated acts (acknowledgment, oath/affirmation, verification on oath, signature witnessing, certified copy, protest of a negotiable instrument).
Description of the record. Title and date of the document — e.g., “General Warranty Deed dated March 14, 2026.”
Full name of each signer.
Full address of each signer. Street address, city, state, ZIP — not just “Pittsburgh.”
Identification method. If personal knowledge: a statement to that effect. If satisfactory evidence: a brief description and credential type (e.g., “PA driver’s license issued 2/4/2024, expires 2/4/2028”). See the SSN ban below for what you cannot record.
Fee charged. Itemized. Waived fees marked “n/c,” “0,” or ”—” (§ 167.32(f)).

The journal itself (paper or electronic) must also contain, on the cover or front matter (§ 167.31): your commissioned name, seven-digit commission ID, expiration date, office address, signature, a statement that in the event of death or incompetency the journal must be delivered to the recorder of deeds within 30 days, and a legend for any uncommon abbreviation used.

Optional entries (§ 167.32(e))

You may also record the signer’s signature, additional transaction details (property address, loan number), and the last four digits of a driver’s license or passport number — as terminal-digit references only. Not SSN, not any other credential.

Prohibited outright (§ 167.32(d))

The journal may not contain any personally identifiable information about a signer, including: any part of a Social Security number (see below), the full driver’s license or government non-driver ID card number, date or place of birth, mother’s maiden name, biometric records, or medical, educational, financial, or employment information. This is the line between a journal that is a lawful business record and a journal that is itself a data-breach liability.

The 2026 SSN ban

Under the March 28, 2026 final rule, no part of a Social Security number may appear in a PA notary journal. That reverses the 2016 proposed regulation, which had allowed the last four digits as a terminal-number reference.

Information that can distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, including any part of Social Security number, full driver’s license number or government nondriver identification card number, date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, or biometric records.

— 4 Pa. Code § 167.32(d)(1), Final-Form Rulemaking, 56 Pa.B. 1672 (March 28, 2026)

For new journals started on or after March 28, 2026: do not record the SSN, do not record the last four digits, do not keep it on a Post-it inside the journal. The ban is flat.

For journals in progress that predate the rule: existing entries with previously lawful last-four SSN references are grandfathered — you do not need to redact them. But every entry from March 28, 2026 forward is under the new rule. Best practice is to note the transition date in the legend at the front of the book.

If a customer or employer asks you to “just note the last four,” the answer is no. Refusing is the law, not a preference. Cite § 167.32(d)(1) and offer the lawful alternative — the last four digits of the driver’s license.

Paper journals

Paper is still fully compliant, still cheaper, and still the default choice for general notaries not doing electronic or remote notarization. Under 4 Pa. Code § 167.33, a tangible-medium journal must meet a specific format:

Permanent binding. Smyth sewing, stitching, glue, staples, grommets, or another permanent method. Tape, paper clips, binder clips, loose-leaf and three-ring formats do not qualify.
Preprinted, consecutive page numbers. You cannot hand-number.
Preprinted, consecutively numbered entries — within each page or through the whole book, but always at the manufacturer.
No blank lines between entries (§ 167.32(b)). Draw a line through any gap before the next entry.
No blank spaces within entries (§ 167.32(c)). Every field gets something — even a dash.

Where to buy a PA-compliant paper journal

Verify binding and numbering against § 167.33 before the first entry — vendor inventory may still be printed to older specifications.

NotaryPublicStamps.com — Perfectly Bound PA Record Book, 576 entries, thumbprint space.
Pennsylvania Association of Notaries (PAN) — PA-compliant journals in soft-spiral and hardcover, bundled into PAN’s new-notary packages.
Engineer Seal Stamps / Notaries Equipment Co. / Notary.net — smaller specialty vendors, PA-specific formats.
Amazon generic “PA Notary Journal” — cheap, but quality varies. Some generic journals fail § 167.33(3) because entry numbers are not preprinted.

Expect to pay $15–$35. A busy mobile notary fills roughly one 500-entry journal every 18 to 24 months.

Electronic journals

Electronic journals are lawful, common, and required in practice for anyone doing electronic or remote notarization. Paper cannot satisfy the tamper-evident requirement for an electronic-record workflow, so a notary who does both maintains both — 57 Pa.C.S. § 319(b) explicitly permits separate journals for paper and electronic records.

Required format (§ 167.34)

An electronic journal must be:

Tamper-evident — entries cannot be inserted, removed, or substituted without detection.
Consecutively numbered from beginning to end — assigned immutably by the software.
Securely stored and recoverable on hardware or software malfunction. A single-device journal living on one phone is not compliant.
Exportable to PDF on request for certified copies (§ 167.36), recorder-of-deeds delivery (§ 319(e)), and inspection.
Cryptographically linked to any captured signature so alterations are detectable.

A spreadsheet — Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers — does not qualify. PA DOS guidance on the Notary Public Equipment page calls this out specifically.

Top electronic-journal options for PA notaries

Platform	Price	RON-integrated	Best for
Jurat Inc. — Notary eJournal	$19/month; free trial	Manual; pairs with NotaryAssist	Independent general-practice journal, 45+ states
NotaryAct	Subscription, contact sales	Integrates with multiple RON vendors	Multi-state signing agents and teams
BlueNotary eJournal	Bundled with account	Native (BlueNotary RON)	Notaries using BlueNotary — eJournal and AV recording in one audit trail
Proof / Notarize eJournal	Bundled with platform	Native	Notaries whose primary workflow is Proof’s on-demand queue

Electronic journals cost meaningfully more per year ($228/year for Jurat vs. zero for paper) but win on search, audit defense, and PDF export. For notaries who will ever produce a certified copy to a litigator or DOS investigator, the electronic export is the difference between a 15-minute task and a week of transcription.

Per-session entries for RON

Remote notarization does not replace the journal — it adds to it. Under 57 Pa.C.S. § 306.1 and 4 Pa. Code Subchapter H, every RON act produces three artifacts:

The notarial certificate on the electronic record, with the statutory “communication technology” statement.
The journal entry — same six required fields as any other act, plus the signer’s location (usually outside Pennsylvania) and the RON technology provider used.
The audio-visual recording of the full session, retained for at least 10 years after creation (57 Pa.C.S. § 306.1(e)).

The journal entry is separate from the AV recording. The statute requires both. Most RON platforms generate the entry automatically and store the recording in the same audit trail — which is why a RON-native eJournal (BlueNotary, Proof) is operationally simpler than a standalone eJournal paired with a third-party RON provider.

When a RON platform shuts down

Pavaso — a long-standing PA-approved RON platform — ceased operations January 1, 2026, briefly stranding thousands of PA notaries from their session recordings and electronic journal entries. The March 28, 2026 final rule added 4 Pa. Code § 167.88(B) to prevent the next version of that crisis. A wind-down provider must:

Notify DOS and every notary who used the technology in the preceding 10 years, at least 60 days before termination.
Provide instructions to export journals and AV recordings before shutdown.
File a list of affected notaries (by name and commission number) with DOS.

The moment a vendor announces wind-down, export everything. Do not wait 59 days — the § 167.88 obligation does not guarantee the system stays reachable on day 60.

The ten-year horizon — what “retention” actually means in PA

RULONA sets two separate clocks that practitioners tend to conflate.

Clock one — custody during the commission. Under 57 Pa.C.S. § 319(h)(2), the journal is the exclusive property of the notary. You keep it. You store it in a location only you can access. An electronic journal is secured by password or personal authentication (§ 167.35(a)). No employer, title company, or signing-service broker may take it — and it cannot be “surrendered to an employer on termination of employment” (§ 319(h)(3)(ii)). That protection is not a suggestion. If your employer demands your journal when you quit, the lawful answer is no.

Clock two — delivery at commission end. Within 30 days of your commission expiring (and you are not immediately reapplying), resigning, or being revoked, you must deliver the journal to the recorder of deeds in the county where you last maintained an office (§ 319(e)). Electronic journals go in PDF or another format prescribed by the recorder (§ 167.34(b)). After delivery, the journal is part of the county’s public records, retained on the recorder’s schedule — not yours.

Where “10 years” comes from. RULONA does not prescribe a specific retention period for the journal while you hold it. Three things push the working horizon to ten years:

RON audio-visual recordings must be retained at least 10 years under § 306.1(e). If your practice includes RON, treating the paired journal on the same clock is best practice.
Technology-provider wind-down notification (§ 167.88(B)) obligates providers to contact every notary who used their platform in the preceding 10 years — the window in which platform-side records may vanish.
Statutes of limitations on negligence and fraud touching a notarized document routinely reach 8 to 10 years in Pennsylvania.

Best practice, not a statutory floor: keep the journal in custody through your commission and deliver it on the 30-day deadline. Plan backups and indexing as if you will need to produce the journal 10 years after the last entry.

Subpoenas and litigation

The journal is inspectable on oral or written request by any person (§ 167.36(a)). Courts, prosecutors, and opposing counsel have stronger tools — subpoenas, court orders, DOS investigatory demands.

Response protocol:

Read the request. Identify who is asking, what entries or date range they want, and the cited legal authority.
Do not refuse on principle. The journal is inspectable by any person under § 167.36(a) in your presence. Outright refusal is itself a violation. You may insist on a reasonable time — not a veto.
Provide a certified copy on request. Under § 167.36(b) and § 319(g.1), certified-copy requests must be fulfilled within 15 days. The request must specify the entry or time period; if it doesn’t, ask the requester to specify before the clock starts.
Produce only what is requested. Copy and certify the covered pages. Never hand over the original book.
Mail certified copies by certified or registered U.S. mail when the requester is out-of-office — delivery records matter if custody later becomes relevant.
Log the request (requester, date, method, pages, date sent) in a separate correspondence file.
Notify your E&O carrier if the subpoena is from opposing counsel in litigation you are not a party to. The carrier may want to coordinate a narrow response.

The original journal is protected by § 319(h)(1) (exempt from execution) and § 319(h)(2) (exclusive property of the notary). Even a criminal subpoena gets a certified copy — not the original — unless a court specifically orders otherwise.

Audit readiness

PA DOS does not publish a routine audit schedule. In practice, the journal gets looked at in three situations: a consumer complaint, a disciplinary investigation triggered by a court order or law-enforcement referral, and the commission-termination delivery to the recorder of deeds.

Recurring findings from the Disciplinary Actions bulletins:

No journal at all. Leading grounds for commission surrender or revocation (Sobol, 2022).
Gaps in entries that don’t match the dates on stamp impressions recovered from field documents. Cross-referencing is how DOS tests whether entries are contemporaneous.
Blank lines between entries left unstruck — a § 167.32(b) violation that raises the inference of back-dated entries.
PII in entries (SSNs, full license numbers, dates of birth) — a § 167.32(d) violation and a data-breach exposure.
Missing identification method on walk-in transactions — common in notaries who “recognize” signers and skip the field.
Journal present but unavailable on short notice — inconsistent with § 167.35(a) custody and control.

Audit defense is built in the daily entry, not at the audit. A clean journal is boring to review; a messy one is expensive.

Sample journal entry

The example below is fictional and illustrative — a § 167.32-compliant paper entry that omits all prohibited PII.

Entry #00247

Date / time: March 14, 2026 — 2:42 PM Type of act: Acknowledgment Document: General Warranty Deed dated March 14, 2026 (2 pages) Signer: Jane E. Doe Address: 412 Maple Ridge Road, Lancaster, PA 17603 Identification: Satisfactory evidence — PA driver’s license, issued 02/04/2024, expires 02/04/2028. Terminal digits (last four of DL): 4182. Fee charged: $5.00 Location of notarial act: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Notary signature: Jane Notary signs adjacent to the entry.

Notice what the entry does not contain: no SSN (not even the last four), no date of birth, no full driver’s license number, no biometric, medical, or employer data. The last-four terminal digits of the driver’s license are optional under § 167.32(e) and provide useful cross-reference without violating § 167.32(d).

Paper vs electronic — decision table

Dimension	Paper journal	Electronic journal
Cost	$15–$35 one-time	$19–$40+/month, or bundled with RON platform
Format compliance	Preprinted bound pages, preprinted entry numbers (§ 167.33)	Tamper-evident, cryptographically sealed, consecutively numbered (§ 167.34)
RON-compatible	No	Yes (required if RON-integrated)
E-notarization compatible	No	Yes
Search / retrieval	Page-by-page, slow	Full-text search, filterable by signer/date
PDF export for § 167.36 certified copies	Manual photocopy + certification	Native export
Backup	Fire/flood risk; no digital copy	Vendor-managed backups; recoverable on device failure (§ 167.34(a)(3))
Delivery at commission end	Physical hand-off to recorder of deeds	PDF or other prescribed format (§ 167.34(b))
Employer coercion risk	Low — physical possession by notary	Low if secured by personal password (§ 167.35(a))
Long-term readability	Indefinite (paper + ink)	Dependent on vendor continuity (see § 167.88)
Best for	General traditional notary; in-person appointments	RON, e-notary, high-volume, signing-agent work

Most PA notaries who do any meaningful volume run both: a paper journal for in-person traditional acts, and an electronic journal (usually the one bundled with their RON platform) for electronic or remote acts. Separate journals are explicitly permitted under § 319(b).

At commission end

Under 57 Pa.C.S. § 319(e), when your commission ends — expiration without renewal, resignation, or revocation — you have 30 days to deliver the journal to the recorder of deeds in the county where you last maintained an office. If you resign and reapply within the same 30-day window, delivery is deferred until the new commission issues (or the window closes without reappointment).

Under § 319(g), if you die or are adjudicated incompetent, your personal representative, guardian, or anyone knowingly in possession of the journal must deliver it to the recorder within 30 days. Name this obligation in your business continuity plan — a spouse or executor who doesn’t know can violate the statute unknowingly.

Electronic journals go as a PDF export or in the format the recorder prescribes (§ 167.34(b)). Contact the recorder’s office before the deadline — some accept encrypted flash drives, some require email, some want printed-and-bound PDFs. Best practice is to retain your own certified copy of the export for your personal defense records.

Parallel obligation — the stamping device. Under 57 Pa.C.S. § 318(a)(2), on resignation or expiration you must disable the stamping device (destroy, deface, damage, erase, or secure against use). If your commission is suspended or revoked, you must surrender the device to the Department. The journal-delivery and stamp-destruction clocks run in parallel at the end of every commission — calendar them together.