Fax Cover

While emailing forms has replaced the usage of fax machines in many office scenarios, there are still occasions when the fax machine is preferable. Particularly when forms require to be signed and returned, a fax is oftentimes more convenient and, really, the only way to get a legitimate signature on a document. There are types of technology that seek to make it possible to electronically sign a document, but in these cases the signature is generally hard to verify and the procedure required to add the signature may be difficult for users.

Electronic signatures are usually added to a document by means of a stylus or of a stored image of the person's signature which has been scanned in a file and which is pasted to the document. In the former case, the stylus devices oftentimes give less-than-ideal results, garbling a person's signature until it looks like a random collection of lines with little definition of the letters. In the latter case, the process of adding a signature to a document can easily become time-consuming, requiring resizing, adjusting the image to match the color of the document and merging the signature with the original document, saving it in a format that can be sent back and hoping that the results are passable. It's far easier to simply sign a fax.

While documents that are faxed may not offer the high-resolution of computer screens, they do provide a verifiable, paper copy of documents that can be kept for filing purposes. The faxing process is very secure, provided the receiving end is monitored, and the sender gets a confirmation that allows them to verify that they provided the document to the party who requested it on a certain date and time, a very useful feature for documents with legal or financial importance.

While there are very complex models of fax machines available, most offices can purchase a basic model for under $100. In cases where computer networks fail, they provide a means to keep doing business while repairs are made and to keep the workflow steady. Though email and other messaging technology does provide a handy written record of communication between two or more parties, when a document needs to be finalized and verified to have been read and agreed to by a party, there is really no substitute for a faxed, signed document. Fax technology has endured largely because of this.