Do You Have These Apps for Managing Your Notary Business?

There are many notary questions that a beginning notary public has as they start their job. While there are issues that every notary public faces, an independent notary faces additional problems from basically running a small business. From getting customers to managing work systems and documents, an independent notary public will benefit from the following software tools.

CRMs

A great CRM helps you manage your business systems because it gives you the tools to communicate and plan your customer relationships. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management software and for a notary public, managing customers is essential to creating regular streams of revenue.

Depending upon your size and marketing strategies, there are several apps that deliver great CRM functionality. Hubspot has a free CRM system which integrates with their inbound marketing automation. Hubspot is great for managing relationships with regular and better-paying clients like loan notarization. For more public focused relationships, an app like 17Hats will give you tools to manage your customer relationship, time management, and accounting systems.

Workflow Planning

While the work of a notary public may seem simple, it requires many different processes to create and manage the relationships necessary for building a successful business, like any small business. In other words, a successful notary business requires that you manage customers, manage income and expenses, and find ways to get more people bringing their documents into your business.

Without more people using your services, you will not be successful. A good software system for managing all these different work processes is a workflow management tool. There are several freemium plans on the market that will give you the tools to manage most small businesses for free (Freemium is a subscription model where the first price is free and the premium levels cost more).

Workflowy is one process management app. While it looks like a document management system, its intuitive outlining gives you the tools to organize your thoughts and plan your day. While there are other apps better for task management, Workflowy is one of the best apps for taking your business ideas and fleshing them out into actual plans.

On the other end of the spectrum, Trello provides management systems so that you can plan work processes. While Workflowy starts with the business brainstorm, Trello starts with a goal and helps you organize the steps to achieve that goal. Together, these two process management systems give you the ability to manage your business, to facilitate networking and planning, and to communicate with interested parties about your business.

Document Management Apps

A notary public specializes in document management. While you have to be present to testify that the individual who signed the document is who they say they are, there are many steps of your document management system which are often done electronically. For these steps, secure, cloud-based document management systems are often a great way to ensure that you have complete control of the documents you need, that you have access to your customers, and that you are able to interact with business partners.

For example, if you develop a strategic partnership with a mortgage company to notarize their loans, you will often need to have the documents given to you in an electronic form which you can print off and have the client sign. Rather than using email or other older versions of document management, a great management app will facilitate secure document storage and access.

Dropbox is one of the leading document management systems for small businesses. Their personal accounts are free and are just as secure as their business management systems. With Dropbox, you are able to access documents wherever you need to, all your documents in Dropbox are automatically backed up on the cloud, and you are able to track revisions to ensure documents do are not edited after they are notarized.

These are just some of the many tools that an independent notary public will use in starting their business. Please let us know in the comments below about any tools you use to build success in your business.