Internet Fax

[S T]

I know we are in the middle of tax time, but that is always the time it seems one of our office equipment components decides to quit functioning.

As of right now, that is my fax machine, which is under undo stress during this time of year.

I am wondering if anyone here uses internet fax (secured of course). I am really tired of purchasing fax machines, toner cartridges and paper. Seems like the actual fax machines die in about 2-3 years, the toner cartridges are terribly expensive and then we won't talk about the paper.

Unfortunately I am in one of those positions to make a somewhat snap decision quickly, since the fax machine seems to be wanting to go to fax heaven!

Since I am about 60% on my way to paperless, converting to Internet Fax seems like it could be a good alternative.

Thanks for anyone's input and experience.

Sandy

[Brian EA]

I have been using efax for the last 4 years. It's the best fax machine for me. It goes straight to my email and I can pick it up anywhere. Of course the privacy is #1 priority.

Give it a shot. You will love it.It is not paperless. You have to print it from the email.

Good luck

brian

[DTS]

Sandy

Give e-Fax a look. I have a lot of customers that send me faxes to via e-Fax. It's email based from what little info I've gotten and plan on checking it out after the season. I think I was told it was free, but not sure about that.

Another avenue may be WinFax, however, the last time I bought it, I had so many problems with the install, computer sections freezing and unable to uninstall it, I took it back. Years before that, it came factory installed and it was great.

Dennis

[Holland]

I have been using efax for the last 4 years. It's the best fax machine for me. It goes straight to my email and I can pick it up anywhere. Of course the privacy is #1 priority.

Give it a shot. You will love it.It is not paperless. You have to print it from the email.

Good luck

brian

I rather like efax. I have found we do not have to print it out, unless it requires a signature. Client documents are stored directly in the client electronic files. I send and receive without shifting my posterior from my chair.

[DTS]

e-Fax

Brian and Christopher,

Would either of you explain how it works and how we go about setting up or signing up? Any cost involved and I'm assuming it is secure??

Thank you,

Dennis

[S T]

Efax

This is one of the services I was looking at.

Thanks Brian and Bill,

Next question, is which plan are you on. As we all know the heavy load is late Jan through April 15, and after that it tapers way down. Can you share what your cost is?

I really don't send many faxes, I receive more. I use my email as much as possible to send and add attachments. But there are those clients that only have a fax machine.

Thanks for sharing!

Sandy

[veritas]

I am interested

How is a fax secure when it goes through the internet?

[S T]

Secure Internet

I am not savy to all of the computer lingo, but so many of the sites, say something about Secure and using SSL, etc, My ISP on my email had me upgrade to SSL, whatever that means. Something like Secure Socket Layer and having a certificate.

I am sure there is someone here on the Board, that understands computer lingo and can explain it to us, while I am still tyring to understand the Tax Lingo. I only get involved enough in the computers and internet to keep it running!

Sandy

[David1980]

On the efax site, the only security I see mentioned is in their private policy/security page where it talks about the security of your login and personal information.

Doesn't seem to cover the security of the faxes. And unless they could somehow ensure the email was going through secured methods all the way from them to your inbox it doesn't seem possible they can guarantee the security on that. Of course I also know that some big companies (think green?) frequently send tax returns over the internet unencrypted. I imagine it's just a matter of time until someone taps into the communications and there's a high publicity theft of a few million's people tax returns before they start taking security seriously.

[Gretel]

Sandy, since years I have been using "Callwave" for my incoming faxes. Don't know about any special security issues but I never had any problems with them. For the small amount of faxes I received it even was free until this year. Now they charge $10/month.

They also offers outgoing faxes and I will look into this after tax season.

This combination, using the e-mail for incoming faxes (no more junk faxes) and my computer for some outgoing faxes (modem and windows software included in my computer) and a rather cheap (150.00) fax machine for other outgoing faxes has worked very well for me. No need of toner cartridge or paper.

Good luck. It's ugly to have a break down of equipment at this time of the year.

[Brian EA]

[QUOTE=S T;56070]This is one of the services I was looking at.

Thanks Brian and Bill,

Next question, is which plan are you on. As we all know the heavy load is late Jan through April 15, and after that it tapers way down. Can you share what your cost is?


Mine is called eFax pro . cost is $16 per month

brian

[erchess]

Faxing

I don't have anywhere in my office to put a fax machine so I tried one of the internet fax services but I fired them when they said that creating a signature for documents that require one had to be done by me. They were willing to provide detailed instructions but I was appalled that they would not do it for me at any price so I quit them. I normally use a commercial fax service half an hour away for my faxes if it is not more convenient to use a fax owned by the relevant client or for faxes not related to particular clients,, the machine owned by my Doctor who is very accommodating.

Can anyone tell me what an internet fax service user who has no scanner does when he wants to fax a piece of paper that is not on his computer? I keep meaning to get a fax machine. Can anyone tell me which would be more expensive, a dedicated fax machine or a dedicated scanner? I don't use an all in one because my tax software requires a dedicated printer. Also, could I get a dedicated scanner that would save the file to a CD or flash or memory stick so that I could use the scanner unconnected to my computer?

[Koss]

I normally use a commercial fax service half an hour away for my faxes if it is not more convenient to use a fax owned by the relevant client or for faxes not related to particular clients,, the machine owned by my Doctor who is very accommodating.

Someone's going to accuse you of doctoring their records.

Can anyone tell me what an internet fax service user who has no scanner does when he wants to fax a piece of paper that is not on his computer?

He uses the scanner that is owned by his doctor.

I keep meaning to get a fax machine. Can anyone tell me which would be more expensive, a dedicated fax machine or a dedicated scanner? I don't use an all in one because my tax software requires a dedicated printer. Also, could I get a dedicated scanner that would save the file to a CD or flash or memory stick so that I could use the scanner unconnected to my computer?

Your scanner will not need to be connected to a phone line. You can scan documents, save them to your C drive (or to a flash drive or whatever) and then simply send the scanned image, through your e-mail account, to a fax phone number destination.

Outbound fax transmissions are sent as e-mail messages, and do not require a phone line at all. The system converts the attached images to a fax-readable image on the other end. The services that charge monthly fees provide an outgoing telephone line to "call" the recipient's fax machine.

Inbound fax transmissions involve a dedicated phone number, because the whole point is that the person who is sending you a fax, or receiving your fax, may not even have a computer, and they certainly don't have an e-mail account. They have a fax machine.

If you don't already have a dedicated fax phone number, you can have a phone number assigned to you as part of a monthly service you sign up for. But that phone number will belong to the service, and it will be dedicated to you. If you cancel the service, you'll lose that phone number.

[Lion]

Fax

I used to use the free fax software that was bundled on my computer. It went out over the computer line at no additional cost. And, that line is a plain vanilla line with no extra features like voice mail since it's the computer only, so phone line cost is very, very low. I absolutely loved it. Then we switched phone service and internet (and TV) to Optimum cable. I love Optimum for most things, but it didn't play well with the fax software, causing the fax to answer ALL calls (even voice or computer) or NO calls, having to manually answer the fax to receive without it hijacking voice calls. Still fine for outgoing since I'm sitting here sending anyway, but just can't receive so gave up on it. Need to look for software that's compatible with my Optimum cable. But, if you have an opportunity for faxing via computer, you'll love it. The junk faxes you get to delete without wasting paper and toner. Faxes you create in your computer are good to go, and faxes you receive that you want to store in your computer anyway are already there. As long as you have a scanner for those papers that are NOT in your computer but need to be faxed out, you'll be very happy.

[Valarie]

Sandy, since years I have been using "Callwave" for my incoming faxes. Don't know about any special security issues but I never had any problems with them. For the small amount of faxes I received it even was free until this year. Now they charge $10/month.

They also offers outgoing faxes and I will look into this after tax season.
Good luck. It's ugly to have a break down of equipment at this time of the year.

Gabriele,

We've used Callwave for about the last 6 months for incoming faxes into our payroll area only (where there is a high volume of incoming faxes) at the $10 per month that you quoted. We looked into having the outgoing service as well, and it's an additional $2.00 per month, up to 200 pages/month.

In comparison, the Efax service that others are using is 16.95/mo for 130 incoming pages and only 30 outgoing pages.

(FYI, the IRS will accept most information via fax, but not via email, for security purposes.)

Looking to change over permanently after tax season...

Valarie
Flower City Tax
Rochester NY