Free fax cover sheet generator: fill it in, print it or save it as a PDF

What is a fax cover sheet, and what has to be on it?

A fax cover sheet is the first page of a fax. It tells whoever picks the pages off the machine who they are for, who sent them, how to call back, and how many pages should have arrived. It exists because a fax machine is usually shared: the pages land in a tray in a mailroom, a records office or a clerk’s window, and the cover is the only thing that routes them to the right desk. Nothing in the fax protocol requires one; every office that publishes a fax number expects one.

A complete cover sheet carries seven things. The recipient’s name and fax number, so a misdirected fax can be recognised as one. The sender’s name and a number to call back, so a missing page can be asked for. The date. The total number of pages, counting the cover itself. A subject line, which on a fax to an agency should carry the reference, case or account number. An optional message of a line or two. And, where the pages are personal, an optional confidentiality notice asking anyone who received them in error to call and destroy them. The generator above produces exactly those fields and nothing else, because a cover that says more is a page the recipient has to read before they reach the document.

Why does the page count on a cover sheet matter?

The page count is the one field on the cover that does a job the machines cannot. Under ITU-T Recommendation T.30, the procedure every fax machine follows, the receiving machine confirms each page after it has decoded it, and the sending machine reports success only once the last confirmation has arrived. That confirmation passes between the two machines. It tells the sender the pages arrived; it tells the recipient nothing, because the recipient sees only what came out of the tray, and a fax cut short by a paper jam, a busy line or a second call on the same line looks, from the tray, like a complete fax.

A cover that says “5 pages including this one” is how the recipient notices that only four came out and calls the number you gave them. Count the cover. A cover that says “4 pages” on top of a four-page document confuses exactly the person it was meant to help, and it is the commonest mistake on the sheets that arrive at records departments. The generator’s page field is labelled “including this cover” for that reason, and the footer of the sheet repeats the total.

Why does your name go on the cover and not in the header?

Every page a fax machine receives is printed with a header line along the top edge: the date and time, the sender’s fax number and the page number, in a single line of small monospaced type. The receiving machine or the sending carrier adds it; you do not write it. That line identifies the line the fax came from, not the person. When you send from an office fax machine, the header shows the office’s number; when you send from a phone app such as Faxvio, it shows the carrier’s number, which is the same for every user of the app.

Your name therefore reaches the recipient in one place only, the From field of the cover sheet, and the number they should call is the one you write there, not the one in the header. That is why the generator treats the callback number as the most important field on the form: leave it blank and the recipient has no way to reach you except the number in the header, which does not ring a phone.

Which layout should you use: plain, medical, legal or business?

The four layouts differ in the heading line and in the wording of the confidentiality notice, and in nothing else, because the fields a records clerk needs are the fields a court clerk needs. Plain is the default and is right for almost everything. Medical adds a line asking anyone who received the pages in error to notify the sender by telephone and not to copy or forward them, which is the wording medical records offices are used to seeing. Legal adds the customary line about privilege and asks that the pages not be reviewed or distributed by anyone other than the recipient. Business keeps the notice to two sentences.

One thing should be said plainly about all four. A confidentiality notice on a cover sheet is a courtesy and a request. It is not a contract, it does not bind the person who picked the pages off the machine, and it does not turn a fax sent to the wrong number into one that was never sent. If the pages are sensitive, the protection is checking the number before sending, which is why Faxvio quotes the destination country and reads the number back to you before it charges a page. The notice is worth including anyway, because most offices honour it and it costs nothing.

Does a cover sheet cost a page?

On a fax machine, yes. The cover is transmitted like any other page, and a service that charges the sender by the page, or a copy shop that charges by the page sent, counts it. In Faxvio the cover page is generated inside the app from the fields you type, added to the transmission, and never counted against your balance: a two-page document with a cover uses two pages, and the pricing page says so in its list of what is never charged. The generator on this page exists for the case where you are faxing from a machine, a multifunction printer or another service that does not make a cover for you, or where an office insists on a particular layout. If you are sending from Faxvio, the app’s own cover carries the same fields and there is nothing to print.

How do you fill in a cover sheet for an agency?

Faxes to a tax office, a court, an insurer or a benefits agency are routed by reference number, not by name, and the cover sheet should be built around that. Write the agency’s fax number exactly as it is printed on the letter or the form, including the area code; if the letter gives a fax number for a particular department, use that one rather than the general number on the website. Put the reference in the subject line in the agency’s own words: the case number, the claim number, the notice number, the account number, whatever the letter calls it. Name the form you are sending. Give a daytime number where a person can reach you, because the commonest reason a faxed form stalls is a question nobody could ask.

Keep the message to a sentence. The document is the message; the cover only has to say what it is and where it goes. Do not write account passwords or card numbers on the cover, and do not add identity documents unless the letter asks for them. The table gives the subject line and the contents each kind of office expects.

What are the mistakes that get a fax ignored?

• No callback number. A fax that raises a question and gives no number to ask it on waits in a tray until someone finds time to write back, which is often never. The header line shows a fax number, not a phone.
• A page count that leaves out the cover. The recipient counts, comes up one short or one over, and either calls about a page that was never missing or assumes the document is incomplete.
• Grey or small type. A fax is transmitted as black-and-white dots, at 203 by 98 dots per inch in standard mode or 203 by 196 in fine mode, and grey text, thin strokes and anything under about ten points arrive broken or blank. The fax preview tool shows a page as the receiving machine will print it before you send.
• The wrong number. A fax to a misread digit goes to a stranger’s machine, and the notice on the cover will not bring it back. Check the number against the letterhead, and for an international number check the country code and prefix with the number formatter.
• A message that repeats the document. The cover is read in the three seconds it takes to walk from the machine to a desk. One sentence saying what is attached is enough.
• Handwritten fields. Handwriting at fax resolution is a lottery. Print the cover, or let the app generate it.

Letter or A4: which paper size should the cover be?

Choose the size your recipient uses, which is the size the document itself is on. US Letter is the standard in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines; A4, the ISO 216 size, is the standard almost everywhere else, including the whole of Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and Brazil. The difference matters less on a fax than on paper. ITU-T Recommendation T.4, which defines how a fax page is coded, specifies a standard scan line 215 mm wide, 1728 picture elements, so both Letter at 215.9 mm and A4 at 210 mm fit the width of a transmission. The difference is in the length, 279 mm against 297 mm, and a receiving machine loaded with the other size either scales the page slightly or continues it onto a second sheet. The generator sets the preview’s proportions to the paper you choose so the print dialog produces a page with the right margins.

Bottom line

A fax cover sheet is the first page of a fax and carries seven things: the recipient’s name and fax number, the sender’s name and a callback number, the date, the total page count including the cover, a subject line with any reference number, an optional short message, and an optional confidentiality notice. The page count is the field that lets the recipient notice a missing page, because under T.30 the machines confirm delivery only to each other; the callback number is the field that lets them ask about it. The generator on this page produces that sheet in a plain, medical, legal or business layout on Letter or A4, and prints it or saves it as a PDF from your browser without sending anything anywhere. In Faxvio the cover page is generated in the app and is never charged.