By ScoutMyTool Editorial Team · Last updated: 2026-05-27
Introduction
I keep two stacks of PDFs in every surveying job: the recorded plat that came down from the county, and a phone scan of my field notebook with my own measurements written over old monument descriptions. The reconciliation between those two — the field reality and the recorded reality — is where surveying happens, and PDF is the carrier that makes the back-and-forth with the title company sane. This is a companion to our boundary primer, focused on the muscle memory of the field-to-final workflow.
Vocabulary, quickly
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Recorded plat | County-filed boundary PDF — the public record-of-truth |
| Field notes | Handwritten measurements and monument notes from the day on site |
| Monument | Physical boundary marker (pin, capped rebar, cross) noted on the plat |
| Reconciliation | Side-by-side check of field readings vs the recorded plat |
| Bearing | Compass direction (N 45° E etc.) on each boundary line |
| Tie-out | Measurement from a known monument to a recovered or set one |
| Sign-off PDF | Final signed/sealed deliverable for the title file |
Step by step
- Pull the recorded plat as PDF. County GIS or recorder site. Save with case-number filename and keep the original — never annotate the recorded copy.
- Scan field notes the day you take them. Phone scanner to PDF, OCR enabled. Memory of the day fades faster than the ink.
- OCR the scanned notes. Run handwriting-aware OCR. You will get 70–90% accuracy on typed measurements, lower on cursive — keep the scan plus the OCR text together.
- Build a reconciliation PDF. Side-by-side layout: recorded bearing/distance on left, field bearing/distance on right, difference column.
- Flag tolerance breaks. Highlight any field-vs-recorded mismatch above survey tolerance. A red highlight on a 0.5' miss draws attention; a green highlight on a 0.05' miss confirms the line.
- Note monument condition. For every monument: recovered as described / recovered displaced / set new / not found. PDF sticky notes anchored to the plat work well.
- Sign and seal the deliverable. Apply digital signature with your professional seal as an embedded image. Flatten before sending to title.
- Archive the kit by case number. Recorded plat / field-notes scan / OCR text / reconciliation PDF / signed deliverable — one folder, predictable names.
Practical checklist before you send
- Compute polygon closure from your extracted bearings and distances as a sanity check on the OCR; a non-closing polygon is almost always an OCR misread on a single bearing rather than a real field error.
- Photograph each monument before and after recovery (recovered as-described, recovered displaced, set new) and embed the photo in the deliverable PDF next to the tie-out table.
- Keep the recorded plat and your annotated working copy as separate files; never edit the recorded plat, because the title company will ask for the original record.
- Color-code reconciliation deltas (red over tolerance, yellow at tolerance, green under tolerance) so the reviewer's eye lands on disputes first.
- Embed your professional seal as an image at the right size for legibility at 100% zoom; an oversized seal looks unprofessional and a too-small seal fails legibility review.
- Predictable filename pattern (case-number / plat / notes / reconciliation / signed) makes next month's job a copy-paste.
- Confirm with your state board which digital-signature format their licensing rules require; standards vary by jurisdiction and some still require a wet-signed scan as a fallback.
Related reading and tools
FAQ
- How do I OCR handwritten field notes without losing the numbers?
- Handwriting OCR is noisy on cursive but reliable on printed digits. Print measurements in your notebook — capital block letters, clear spacing — and OCR accuracy on those rows climbs above 90%. After OCR, sanity-check by computing closures from the OCR-read bearings and distances; if the polygon closes within tolerance, the OCR was right.
- Should I annotate the recorded plat PDF directly?
- No — keep the recorded plat untouched as the public-record copy. Make a working copy, annotate the working copy with your monument findings and field measurements, and reference the recorded version by filename in your reconciliation PDF. If anyone asks for the unaltered recorded plat, you have it.
- What is the right way to merge a field-notes scan with the recorded plat?
- A two-page PDF: page 1 the recorded plat, page 2 the field-notes scan, with the reconciliation table on a page 3. This preserves both originals and gives the title reviewer a single artifact to look at. Bookmark each page so navigation is one click.
- How do I capture tie-out measurements clearly in a PDF?
- A table: from-monument / to-monument / measured distance / measured bearing / recorded distance / recorded bearing / delta. Put it on its own page in the deliverable PDF. The title underwriter wants to see the math, not have to re-derive it from a description block.
- What if the recorded plat is itself a scan with no text layer?
- Many older plats are. OCR the scan to give it a text layer (small accuracy hit on the metes-and-bounds), then you can search for monument descriptions and bearings. Keep the original image-only version too — it is the official record — and use the OCR'd copy for working.
- How do I make a sealed PDF that holds up legally?
- Apply your professional seal as an embedded image and sign with a certificate-backed digital signature (not just a typed name). Flatten the PDF so the seal and signature cannot be lifted or edited. Confirm with your state board what their preferred digital-seal format is — requirements vary.
Citations
- Wikipedia — “Land surveying — practice, equipment, and recorded plats.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying
- Wikipedia — “Metes and bounds — boundary description method.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metes_and_bounds
Ship a clean survey deliverable
Build the deliverable PDF in the browser, sign and flatten, ship to title — no upload of the field data.
Merge plat + notes + reconciliation →