State-compliant digital journal for mobile notaries

The idea

A mobile notary does signings in cars, kitchens, and hospital lobbies, then records each one in a paper journal that their state requires them to keep for years. Lose the journal and it is a genuine legal problem, reportable to the state in some jurisdictions. Coffee, car boots, and house moves are all threats to a legally mandated record.

The e-journal products that exist are desktop-era, built as add-ons to remote-online-notarisation platforms, and miserable to use standing at a signing table. The wedge is phone-first, offline-first capture with per-state field rules baked in, so a Texas notary is never shown a field Texas prohibits and never allowed to skip one it requires.

Who pays

Notaries, especially loan signing agents doing several signings a day, pay 10 USD/month or 96 USD/year themselves; it is a deductible business expense protecting the record their commission depends on. Distribution: the National Notary Association’s orbit, loan signing agent Facebook groups and courses (a large, tool-hungry community), and app store search for notary journal, which has weak incumbents.

MVP scope

• Entry wizard driven by CA, TX, and FL rule configs
• On-screen signature capture and ID-method fields per state rules
• Offline-first storage with background sync
• Immutable entries with hash-chained tamper evidence
• Encrypted PDF and CSV audit export
• Skip for v1: other states, remote online notarisation, invoicing, mileage tracking, thumbprint hardware

Build NotaryLog, a phone-first digital notary journal for mobile notaries, launching with California, Texas, and Florida rule sets.

Stack: React Native with Expo, Supabase (Postgres + auth + storage), Stripe for subscriptions.

Core flow: after each notarisation, the notary runs an entry wizard whose fields are driven by a per-state config file: date and time, act type (acknowledgement, jurat, oath, copy certification), document description, signer name and address, ID method (which ID types are permitted varies by state), fee charged, and, where the state requires it, the signer's on-screen signature captured with a finger and, where permitted, a thumbprint placeholder or ID photo. The wizard refuses to save an entry missing a state-required field and hides fields the state prohibits recording. Entries work fully offline and sync when connectivity returns.

Screens: entry wizard, journal list with search and date filters, entry detail (read-only after save), state selection and profile, export screen, subscription paywall.

Implementation details: entries are immutable after save; corrections are new linked entries, matching paper-journal line-out rules. Chain entries with a per-entry SHA-256 hash including the previous entry's hash, making the journal tamper-evident, and offer an encrypted PDF plus CSV export for state audits with the hash chain included.

Pricing: 10 USD/month or 96 USD/year via Stripe, 30-day trial, unlimited entries.