Have You Ever Thought About How Much Money It Costs You to Fax a Document?

by Sarah Leah Gootnick, Founder of Secretary in Israel

As a business owner, you know that faxing documents is an integral part of running your business. Even with email being the de facto form of communication, you still need to fax agreements to your clients, to your employees, and to your vendors. But have you stopped and asked yourself, "How much money is it costing me to fax?"

Now I'm not talking about how much money it costs to send the fax through the phone line. We all know that cost is negligible. What I am referring to is -- how much of your time (and your time is worth money) is it costing you to send a fax?

I recently started a new business, and part of signing up my clients involves faxing them a "new client agreement." I noticed that faxing these agreements was slowing me down. However, I didn't realize exactly how much it was slowing me down until one day I actually timed myself faxing. (Yes, true story; what can I say?)

You won't believe this, but it literally took me 1 hour to fax 3 agreements (and each agreement was only 5 pages long!). How is that possible? Well here are the steps that I took in order to fax each agreement:

1. First, I opened the agreement in Microsoft Word and typed in the client's name, address, and phone #.
2. Next, I printed out the agreement.
3. Then, I faxed the agreement.
4. Then, after I got the fax back from the client (and I'm not including the time it took to email clients reminding them to send it back), I photocopied the agreement.
5. Finally, I sent a signed copy to the client in the mail.

Once I realized how much time it was taking me, I was determined to find another way to fax my agreements to my clients.

A Brief Interlude -- Your Time is Worth Serious Money
Allow me to take a moment to highlight a critical fact that many entrepreneurs and small business owners overlook: your time is worth serious money. A number of time-management gurus (Tim Ferriss, Randy Pausch, and others) are encouraging business owners to think of their time in terms of money. For example, if you make $100/hr, every hour that you spend doing administrative work (which is work that you can outsource for $20/hr), you've just lost $80 that hour.

When you look at your time this way, you start to see that every minute of your time is extremely valuable. As a business owner, you should be using your time to do those things that only you can do, such as meeting with clients, doing marketing to solicit new clients, developing new products, etc. You should either outsource the rest of your tasks, or you should find an extremely efficient way to do them (if you're going to keep them on your plate).

How to Fax in 2 Minutes (Instead of 20 Minutes)
So back to faxing. Here is how I reduced my faxing time by 90%, and got it to around 2 minutes.

After doing a lot of research, I signed up for a service that enables me to fax documents from my email. Yes, it's true. I literally fax from the same screen that I send emails from. I use www.ringcentral.com, which gives me 300 fax pages/month for $9.99.

To fax from your email (once you have set up your ringcentral.com account), do the following:

1. Go to 'Compose Mail' in your email account.
2. In the "To" field, type the fax # followed by rcfax.com. For example: 4155551212@rcfax.com.
3. In the "Subject" field, write whatever you want to be the cover letter. For example: o Hi Bob. It was great talking with you today. Please fax back all 3 pages of the agreement, and then we can get started working together. Looking forward to it! Sarah Leah
4. Upload your client agreement as an attachment to the email. This step is where you will save most of the time, especially if you do the following:
   
   • 4.1. Make sure to keep your client agreement as a template with blanks for client name, address, etc. Have your client fill out that information his/herself, thereby saving you loads of time.
   •  4.2. Put your signature in this client agreement. This way, when your clients fax back the agreement, you can just file it away, and you don't have to fax it back to them. To put your signature in the agreement:
   • 4.2.1. Scan your signature into your computer.
   • 4.2.2. Cut it out and save it as a JPEG.
   • 4.2.3. In your Microsoft Word client agreement, go to 'Insert' then 'Picture' then 'From File.' Insert the JPEG of your signature. 5. Click 'Send'. That's it! The fax software will email you a confirmation if the fax went through or not. 6. When the fax is sent back to you, archive it in a 'Client Agreement', 'Employee Agreement', or 'Vendor Agreement' folder.

You have now just saved yourself 18 minutes, or $30 (assuming that you make $100/hr). Congratulations!

About the Author, Sarah Leah Gootnick Sarah Leah Gootnick is the founder of Secretary in Israel LLC (www.secretaryinisrael.com), the premier virtual assistant placement organization. Secretary in Israel places business owners who are located in the USA with highly experienced, college-educated AMERICAN assistants. All of the assistants work on a part-time basis (5 - 15 hours/week) virtually from their homes in Israel. This arrangement gives business owners the best of both worlds - the talent and experience of hiring an American assistant domestically but at reduced, international, outsourced rates.

Sarah Leah Gootnick is also the author of The Ultimate Small Business Owner's Resource Guide, which lists over 100 time and money savings businesses that every web-based business owner needs to know about. You can learn more about The Ultimate Guide here: www.ultimatesmallbizguide.com.