The NY notary journal requirement (since Jan 25, 2023)

You studied from a guide that told you New York doesn’t require a notary journal. Then a question about recordkeeping showed up, and you sat there wondering if the guide was wrong or you’d misread it.

The guide was wrong. Or more fairly, it was right a few years ago and nobody updated it.

Here’s the current rule, in plain English.

Quick answer: Yes. Every New York notary has to keep a record of every notarial act, and has since January 25, 2023. You keep those records for at least ten years. The rule covers traditional in-person notaries, not only the online ones. Older study guides that say “journaling isn’t required in NY” are out of date.

The rule that changed on January 25, 2023

New York adopted a set of recordkeeping rules that took effect on January 25, 2023. They live in the regulations at 19 NYCRR Part 182, and the recordkeeping piece specifically is section 182.9.

Legal text: the state adopted 19 NYCRR §182.9 under Executive Law sections 130 and 135-c.

Plain English: a regulation is a rule the Department of State writes to fill in a law the Legislature passed. So there’s no standalone “notary journal statute” to look up by name. It’s a rule attached to the notary law you already study for the exam.

One thing that trips people up. The rule was proposed on July 27, 2022 and adopted effective January 25, 2023. Anything printed before that date, any book, any “free guide,” predates the requirement. That’s exactly why recent test-takers hit journal questions their materials never mentioned. If you’re mapping this into your prep, it fits cleanly into your study plan for the exam.

Does it apply to me if I’m a traditional (non-electronic) notary?

Yes. This is the part stale guides get most wrong.

Legal text: §182.9(a) requires records for every notarial act, paper and electronic alike.

Plain English: it doesn’t matter that you only stamp documents in person with a pen. If you notarize, you keep a record of it. The online-notary rules get more attention because they’re newer and flashier, which is why so many older guides treated recordkeeping as an online-only thing. That was never true. Every commissioned notary in the state is on the hook.

That includes attorneys and law-office staff. There’s no exemption for them. The requirement was heavy enough that the New York State Bar Association’s president, Domenick Napoletano, said it was “so difficult and time consuming that many attorneys chose to stop doing notary work altogether.”

I’m quoting that on purpose, because it sounds terrifying and it shouldn’t. Once you see what a record actually is, it’s a handful of fields you fill in while the signer is still sitting there. We’ll get to a real example.

What the exam asks: expect the “who has to keep records” framing. The answer the state wants is all notaries, in-person included, not just remote ones.

What every record must contain

Section 182.9 lists what goes in each record. Here it is, translated.

1. The date, approximate time, and type of the notarial act.
2. The name and address of each person you served.
3. The number and type of services you performed.
4. The type of credential or ID you used to identify the signer, plus any witness’s name and credential if you relied on a witness to ID them.
5. The verification procedures you used to confirm the person actually appeared before you.
6. For electronic notarizations only, the communication technology and the identity-verification providers you used.

Those six items come straight from §182.9(a)(1)–(6). Think of one row per signing. Here’s a filled-in row so you’re not guessing on your first one:

Field	What you write
Date / time / act	Jul 3, 2026, 2:15 PM, acknowledgment
Name / address	Maria Delgado, 114 Halsey St, Brooklyn NY 11216
Services	1 acknowledgment
Credential used	NY driver license
Verification	Personal appearance, ID checked against signer

An acknowledgment, since it shows up in the example, is when the signer confirms to you that they signed the document willingly. You verify their identity as part of it. That’s one of the most common acts you’ll log.

One field causes real friction: the address. New York makes it mandatory, and signers sometimes push back. In one documented case a signer “demanded that the Notary remove the information from the journal” because she didn’t want her home address recorded. In some states you can leave it blank. In New York you can’t. The clean way to handle it is to tell the signer up front, before you start, that state rules require their address in your record and that the record isn’t a public document sitting on a shelf.

What the exam asks: the six required contents are prime material. If a question lists five items and asks which is missing, it’s usually the address or the verification procedure.

The one rule you can’t cheat: write it while it’s happening

Legal text: §182.9(a) requires each record to be created contemporaneously.

Plain English: contemporaneous means at the same time as the act, not filled in from memory that night or reconstructed for an audit later. The state’s own FAQ puts it plainly: each record “must be made at the same time as the notarial act is performed.”

This matters because backfilling is itself the violation. Fill a record in after the fact and you’ve fabricated it, which is a far bigger problem than a missing line. If you ever forget, resist the urge to patch it. One new notary asked publicly whether she could just write “forgot” in the signature column after her first signing, and the guidance was don’t do that. The honest move is a truthful note of what happened, written as soon as you catch the gap. Don’t backdate it.

What the exam asks: “when must the record be made” has a one-word answer, at the time of the act.

How long you keep it, and who can demand to see it

You hold onto your records for at least ten years.

Legal text: §182.9(b) sets the ten-year minimum; §182.9(c) says records have to be producible on demand.

Plain English: the Secretary of State, and other parties who legitimately need it, can ask to see your records, and you have to be able to produce them. Ten years is the floor, so keeping them longer is fine.

You’re allowed to store them through a third party, like a digital notary-journal app, as long as they’re protected by a password or other secure login. So a traditional in-person notary can absolutely use an app instead of a paper book. What matters is whether the record was made on time and can be produced later. Ink or app makes no difference.

A common lifecycle question: when your commission renews, do you start a fresh journal? The rule doesn’t force a new book. Your retention clock runs ten years from each act, so one continuous record across commissions is fine, and many notaries keep it that way.

The extra rule for electronic notaries

If you notarize online, you carry a second layer.

Legal text: 19 NYCRR 182.8 governs electronic and remote notarization. To perform it you first register separately with the state, with its own application and fee, and you keep an audio-video recording of each remote act for at least ten years.

Plain English: it’s two tiers, and it’s worth getting straight because the exam and stale guides both blur them.

• Every notary keeps the written records above for at least ten years.
• Electronic notaries additionally keep the audiovisual recording of the session, also for at least ten years.

You don’t run two separate journals for this. The cleaner approach is one running record where electronic acts simply carry the extra fields, plus the video stored alongside. If the paper-versus-app question is nagging at you, that’s the extra recordkeeping e-notaries carry, and it’s worth reading before you register.

What the exam asks: the distinction between the two tiers, and the ten-year retention on the recording.

Why your old study guide is wrong about this, and why it survived the repeal fight

Here’s the part almost nobody explains clearly, and it’s the reason searches like yours keep happening.

You’ve probably seen headlines suggesting New York was scrapping the journal rule. There was a real fight. The Assembly passed a bill, A7683, on April 28, 2025 that would have limited recordkeeping to electronic acts only. It moved to the Senate floor, died there without a vote, and got re-referred in March 2026. The year before, Governor Hochul vetoed a similar easing bill, the third year running she rejected one.

So as of the middle of 2026, the wet-ink journal is still mandatory. If you studied the news instead of the rule, you could easily walk away thinking the requirement is gone. It isn’t.

Why does it keep surviving? Because officials treat it as a genuine anti-fraud measure. The New York City Bar argued that dropping the ink-notarization journal “could risk an epidemic of home theft and other documentary fraud,” since “ink notarizations account for virtually all cases of home theft, forgery and documentary fraud in New York.” That’s the reasoning behind the veto, year after year.

One more accuracy note that marks you as someone who actually read the rule. The law never uses the word “journal” or “record book.” Search the full Department of State booklet and you get zero hits for either term. The legal word is “records,” even though the public, and the state’s own FAQ in casual spots, says “journal.” The current authoritative source is the Department of State’s Notary Public License Law booklet, the March 2026 edition, which reprints the full text of Part 182. When a guide quotes an older printing, that’s why current materials matter here.

If you want the bigger picture this sits inside, the recordkeeping rule is one duty among the duties and limits that come with the commission, and the commission itself is the whole path if you’re still working toward it.

What happens if you skip it

Here’s the real picture, without the fear-mongering. New York doesn’t publish a per-missing-entry fine schedule. The teeth are elsewhere: your commission can be suspended or revoked, you can face civil liability to anyone harmed, and a public servant who knowingly ignores a legal duty can be exposed to an “official misconduct” charge, a class A misdemeanor under Penal Law §195.00. Enforcement is complaint-driven, so it usually surfaces when a signing goes sideways and someone starts asking questions.

Flip that around, and that same record is what backs you up. The National Notary Association puts it well: a well-kept journal “can provide supporting evidence that you acted properly during a transaction if you are ever accused of an inadvertent or willful mistake.” Seasoned notaries lean into this and over-record on purpose. One veteran’s rule of thumb: “Better to have too much info as opposed to not having anything when needed.” A well-kept record protects you far more often than it ever exposes you.

FAQ

Do I really need a journal if I only notarize in person? Yes. Since January 25, 2023, every New York notary keeps records of every act, in-person acts included.

Do I have to buy an official state journal? No. New York prescribes no format, there’s no state-issued journal, and a bound, numbered book is only recommended, not required. A plain, sequentially numbered notebook or a password-secured app both comply. You’re not forced into a branded record book.

How long do I keep my records? At least ten years, and longer is fine.

Can someone ask to see my records? Yes. They have to be producible on demand to the Secretary of State and other parties who need them.

When do I fill in the entry? At the moment of the act. Backfilling later is the violation, so log it while the signer is still with you.

Is this actually on the exam? It’s recent rule material, which is exactly the kind of thing the current exam tends to test and older books miss. Expect the six required contents, the ten-year hold, and the write-it-now rule. Those are the ones that show up.

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The journal rule is the sharpest example of how fast this material moves. A book printed in 2022 gets it flat wrong, and a test-taker studying that book walks in blind.

See if you’d catch it. Take the free practice test and find out whether the recent-rule questions would trip you up.

And if you’d rather study from material that tracks changes like this one, the course is kept current, with lifetime access and free updates, so a rule change doesn’t turn your prep into a stale guide overnight.