Do I need a Scanner as a Mobile Notary and Loan Signing Agent?

*Full Transcript Below*

Hi everybody.

This is Bill Soroka, founder of NotaryCoach.com and the Sign and Thrive Notary Training Course and Community.

Welcome to Friday FAQ for October 11th, 2019! I am coming live from San Diego, California.

This week I'm in town for one of the Brendon Burchard events called the Influencer event. Pretty awesome to be in the room packed full of people who are out there trying to change the world for the better.

But this week - I had lots of different options of what I was going to talk about. But I got a no less than four, maybe five emails every week. That's almost one per day asking me which type of scanner would be necessary or if they even needed a scanner for this work. So today we're going to answer the question: "Do I need a scanner as a mobile notary and loan signing agent?"

The short answer is yes - you probably do.

Why is that? It is because signing agents, lenders, title companies - they will sometimes require that documents be sent back after a signing. Sometimes that's because they want to quickly review them and make sure there's no errors so that loans can get funded faster. Sometimes it's purely for quality control and then other times it really doesn't seem to have an impact at all.

Right now the systems for refinances and purchases on the lender level are pretty overwhelmed. So there's not always a set of eyes that are going to review those for you. There are exceptions for that though, so there are times when you'll get specific instructions that say 'as soon as you're done with the signing, scan those back to us so we can review them.' You said you want to pay special attention to those, but the question then comes - What kind of scanner should I get?

If you've researched scanners at all already, it blows my mind how expensive they've gotten. So it really comes down to your budget - and I'm going to give you a few different options and you can decide what your level justifies right now. A lot of it will come to peace of mind, but again, some of the expense of this is just mind boggling.

So the first option that you have really is just to use one of those scanners that's already in an 'all in one' printer that you may have already purchased. I've expressed before, I'm not really a big fan of all in one devices because I have found that something breaks on them relatively quick, whether it's the printing, the scanning, the copying or the (who uses the fax anymore)! But something just ends up not working like it's supposed to.

On these 'all in one' printer/scanner/fax/copy machines though - if they work, they work. The limitation is that you might only be able to do, you know, 10, 15, maybe 20 pages at a time when some of these scanned packages might actually be 50, 75, maybe even 200 pages because they require an entire package to be sent back.

It's not always like that. It's usually just the critical documents or some specific documents that the lender or the title company wants to review after a signing, but it could be whatever they specify.

The other option that you have is a standalone scanner. This is my preferred option. But again, because of the budget, you may not be able to justify this just yet. If you're brand new, don't worry about buying this expensive standalone scanner. You can work your way up to it if it makes sense to you then.

My favorite right now is the Brother ADS 2000 and it can SCAN! It says it has a 50 page maximum, but I've been able to get about 75 pages in there in one single scan - and it works great. It is a work horse. You can do it via WiFi or you can scan just plugging it in.

I tend to use the plugin version because it just seems like it works a lot better. The downside to this is that this will cost you somewhere between 500 and $700. You find them on Amazon all the time. But the cheapest place I found them is at the Costco business center,.in fact, I think it was even only $390 or $370 at one point. So if you can find it there, that might be your best option.

Another favorite that I had, and when I started thinking about doing a standalone scanner - I started with the Fujitsu ScanSnap. It folds up and it can handle about 15 to 20 pages. You might be able to push a little bit more. But again, it's a workhorse that has never let me down, folds up nice and small, actually even fits right into my notary bag if I need it to. It's not mobile per-se, but it is portable. It doesn't plug into my car or anything, but I can take it with me and I can scan from other locations like at a Starbucks or something like that if I needed to. That will run you on Amazon right around less than $300, but right in that ballpark.

Now if you're just starting out or if you have some budgetary restraints, you can use the smart phone apps. There are quite a few out there, but the one that I like and I really use is the Tiny Scanner-Pro edition. It only costs around $5 and that will allow you to create multiple page PDFs. It works like a charm where you just take an image with your phone and it turns it into a PDF - and you can do whatever you need to do with it.

There's also CamScanner. I know a lot of other notaries use CamScanner, so if that works for you, that's great.

What I would love to know is if you're watching this right now and you're an experienced notary - and you have your favorite scan scanning solution - let's just call it that. Please post it in the comments so other notaries can see that too.

I think that's one of the biggest benefits of having a community like ours where we share information and we help people be better and do better at this. So if you have a favorite, go ahead and post it in the comments down below and that will help me learn too.

And as a bonus guys, a lot of times when you're scanning these PDF packages, it'll force you to do say 20 pages at a time or 50 pages at a time. So there'll be 50, 50, 50. When you're sending back three PDF packages to your signing agent, signing agency, or the closing agent, whoever's getting it. If you can find a way, find a solution to merge those documents into one document that makes the life of who ever is receiving that so much easier. That brings a lot of value to the relationship. So if you can find a solution for that, which there are several out there, that will make a huge difference.

And as always, guys, always, always, always keep document and client information secure - security first and foremost as you're finding these solutions for you.

All right guys, thank you so much. Enjoy your Friday and your weekend. I'll talk to you later.


Bill Soroka

Creator and Founder of the Sign & Thrive Notary Training Course and Community.

Is THIS the Friday you'll start your FREE 7-Day Trial?