Fax cover sheet template
Print this, fill it by hand, and put it on top of whatever you're faxing. Every field here exists for a reason — see below the template for what's actually required by law versus just good practice.
FAX
Cover sheet — 1 of pages
Urgent
For review
Please reply
For your records
This transmission may contain confidential information intended only for the addressee. If you received this in error, please notify the sender and destroy this document.
What's actually legally required
- Sender's name. U.S. law (the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's fax rules) requires the sending party to be identified on every page.
- Sender's callback number. Required alongside the name — a real number the recipient can use to reach you.
- Date and time. Standard practice, and most fax machines print this automatically in the header anyway.
What's good practice, not law
- Total page count — the difference between "the fax cut off" and "that's all there was" matters to whoever's reading it.
- A confidentiality notice — not legally required for most documents, but standard, and worth including for anything sensitive.
- An urgency flag — saves the recipient a phone call asking if this needs attention today.
If you're sending online, a service that builds the cover sheet for you handles all of this automatically — you only fill in the "To" and "From" fields once, in a normal web form, no printer required. That's what NerdFax does with every fax.