How to Schedule Faxes with Gmail

Fax scheduling is a useful feature provided by email fax services. It allows you to set a time and date and forget about that important fax you need to send during the weekend. If your business does a lot of faxing, it can free up your mind and time to focus on other tasks.

There are basically three ways you can schedule your faxes:

• Using Gmail scheduling feature.
  
• Using a Gmail add-on.
• Using your online fax account.

Using Gmail scheduling feature

This is the easiest method of the three, as it is already integrated in Gmail.

To schedule your fax, first follow all the steps to send faxes via Gmail, but instead of pressing the send button, press the little white arrow that is next to it.  A menu will pop-up to schedule your email.

You can choose from preset dates (tomorrow morning, this afternoon, or this night), but you can also click on SET DATES and pick the exact time and date you want your fax to be delivered.

Once your fax is sent, you will receive a report from your online fax service as always.

Using a Gmail Add-on

Gmail doesn’t have a way of scheduling emails, so we need to use an add-on for the job. Of all the ones we’ve tried, Boomerang is the best alternative.

This extension offers additional features besides email scheduling, like click & response tracking, reminders and read receipts.

To use Boomerang you need to download the extension here and sign up for an account. The professional account has a monthly subscription price, but you can test is for a month without paying a dime. After that, you can continue with a free account that lets you schedule up to 10 emails a month.

Here’s how to use it schedule your faxes:

1. Install Boomerang on your preferred browser and log into Gmail.
2. Click on Compose
3. Follow the necessary steps to send fax.
4. Click on “Send Later”. You can set an exact time and date to deliver your email fax, or you can use the options “tomorrow morning” and “tomorrow afternoon” to send it at 9:30 or 12:00pm respectively.
5. Click on Confirm

Once you have completed your steps above, you can forget about the fax. You’ll receive a confirmation message as usual when your fax has been delivered.

Using your Online Fax Account

To schedule faxes using this alternative, you’ll need to log into your online fax account and access your fax sending options. It allows you to schedule an unlimited number of faxes, if that’s included in your service.

Another advantage is that is easier than scheduling a fax directly from Gmail, and you don’t need to install an extension or add-on. For this method we’ll use RingCentral Fax as an example, but it works the same on other providers.

To schedule your faxes follow these steps:

1. Log into your online fax account with the service of your choice
2. Head over “Send a Fax” or similar area.
3. Add all the fax details, including number, attachment and optional cover page.
4. Below the attachment area, you’ll find a field named “Send On”. Now just set the date and time you want to deliver your fax using the pop-up calendar.
5. Click on Schedule.

Now you just have to wait for the fax to be delivered. Scheduled faxes will be added to the Outbox folder, where you can check its status.

Scheduling your faxes is a great way to improve your productivity and send documents to international numbers at the right time. With the right tools, it can be a breeze to send your faxes at a later date. Of the methods outlined here we believe using your online account is better, unless you are not planning to schedule more than 10 faxes a month.