There are plenty of templates that you can download for free, or alternatively you can design your own after looking at examples online so that it fits with the branding of your company. There a few things that every fax template should have. To begin with the word “Fax” or “Fax Cover Sheet” should appear at the top of the cover sheet in large bold letters. You can include a logo or some company details alongside this, but it isn’t essential.
These fields could include: To, From, Fax No., Pages, Phone No., Date, Company name, Re and CC. Below these fields there is the option of adding tick boxes that offer some instruction to the recipient. These can include any of the following:
UrgentFor Review
Please Comment
Please Reply
For your information
Please Recycle
Finally there is the comments section that takes up the bulk of the fax cover sheet. This is where you put the message to the recipient, like you would in a letter or email.
So you have a fax template set up, it’s now time to fill it in. When you are preparing a fax cover sheet, you should never handwrite the cover sheet. There are a few reasons why you should always type out your generic fax cover sheet. The first is that it looks unprofessional and hurried, even if the contents of the fax aren’t the most important papers you are sending that day, whenever you are sending a fax, it should always look presentable. The second reason is that handwritten cover sheets can be almost illegible, there is no guarantee that whoever is receiving your fax will be able to decipher what you have written on the cover sheet.
The only exception to this is that you may want to hand tick the tick boxes rather than filling them in on a computer.
Using a computer, you should fill in the cover sheet last, after your fax content is pre-pared and you should go through each field one at a time and fill them in, don’t skip one and think you’ll come back to it later as you might forget in a hurry to get the fax sent. You should also read through the whole fax cover sheet once you have filled it in and before you print it.
1. To – fill this in first and make sure you are spelling the name of the recipient correctly; there is nothing worse than someone called Carolyn received a fax address to Carol or even Catherine.
2. From – the second field to fill out. This should have your full name put in and any title you use professionally e.g. Professor Ian James
3. Fax No. – double check and triple check the fax number and make sure it’s the right one that you are sending the message to.
4. Pages – count and double check the number of pages the fax is once it has been printed and don’t forget to add one more page for the cover sheet.
5. Date – enter the date you are sending the fax on and check the formatting of the date. If you are in America and sending a fax to the UK, you may want to use 12th November 2012 instead of 11/12/12 as the standard formats for dates differ: MM/DD/YY in the USA and DD/MM/YY in the UK. You don’t need to add a time as the fax machine will print a time on the fax, but you might want to jot one down after you have sent the fax.
6. Re – Enter a subject “Signed Drink Licensing Contract” “West County Geological Survey Report” something that describes the content and will be recognisable to the recipient. “What you asked for” is not a suitable subject as it not only doesn’t tell the recipient anything about the fax contents.
When it comes to the comments section of the cover sheet, it can be difficult to know what to put in this field. Even if you are sending a fax to someone who is expecting to receive it, you always need to send some form of message.
The comments should be laid out like a letter with the name of the person you are sending the fax to at the start. This should then be followed by a brief message about the contents of the fax and finished with your name.
For example:
Sonja,
Here are the documents you requested during our telephone conversation on 18th September. I have included the extras we discussed as well. I will be out of the office tomorrow, but if you have any questions, then my assistant will be more than happy to answer them.
Regards
Simon
This is short and to the point, explaining what has been included in the fax and mentions when the fax was requested. Writing a generic fax cover sheet doesn’t have to be complicated. If you are sending out a cold canvas fax to a number of different companies then you should still try and find out who deals with whatever you are faxing out and send the fax addressed to them.
Always make sure that your Fax cover sheet is no longer than one side of standard A4, don’t change the margins as it means your cover sheet won’t print properly when it is faxed through. The design of the template should be very simple too, too many images, graphics or the use of WordArt in the fax cover sheet make the template look unprofessional and often these kinds of faxes are often immediately discarded as spam.
