Virtual fax number: set up reception without a fax machine

Short answer: a virtual fax number turns reception into a plain stream of PDFs. The line lives on a specialised host, every transmission lands as an attachment or in an online space, and your accounting team files it like any other digital document: no machine, no paper, no tray to check. Allow half a day to wire everything — the number, the routing rules, the filing — and a monthly subscription instead of a phone line. The full mechanics of receiving faxes sit on our reference page; this article is the deployment version, written for an accounting team.

Why an accounting team is still a fax target

Invoices are not the only things that arrive by fax: bank statements, tax certificates, order confirmations from long-standing suppliers, auditors' requests. Some correspondents never migrated; others deliberately kept a line because their own clients — administrations included — still ask for it. The result: the accounting team of a small company receives between five and forty transmissions a month, handled today by a machine at the end of a corridor nobody watches.

The problem is less the paper than the processing chain: someone must empty the tray, key in or scan the document, pass it to the right accountant, then file it. Each step adds delay and a chance of loss — exactly what a virtual number removes, because the document arrives already digitised, dated and routable.

What a virtual fax number actually is

The principle has three pieces. A receiving line is hosted by a provider, on its own telephony platform: the sender dials an entirely ordinary number, with no idea that nobody owns the machine. The provider takes the call and converts the transmission into a PDF — black and white, about 200 dots per inch, exactly as the fax protocol carries it. The PDF is finally delivered wherever you decide: a dedicated e-mail address, an online space, sometimes both.

Two families of numbers exist. A geographic number carries your town's area code: it reassures local correspondents and looks natural on letterhead. A non-geographic number is indifferent to place; it follows the company through a move without any porting procedure. For an accounting team, the geographic number is usually the safer default — suppliers sometimes cross-check the billing address against the area code — unless a relocation is scheduled within the year.

The half-day deployment plan

1. List the real senders. Take one month of received faxes: who sends, how often, what volume. That list drives both the choice of plan and the final test.
2. Pick the plan and the number. Plans differ on included volume, how long received documents are kept, the number of delivery addresses, and whether several transmissions can land at once — an auditor sending back a bundle while a supplier sends an invoice must not get a busy tone.
3. Publish the new number before cutting the old line. Put it on letterhead, invoice footers and the website; tell the twenty most frequent senders. Keep the historic line alive for a full month, in parallel — long enough for old printed documents carrying the old number to run out.
4. Write the routing rules. The right accounting rule is rarely "everything into one inbox". Deliver the PDFs to a shared team address, with a copy to the filing folder; where the provider allows it, filter by the number dialled — a second number, printed only on invoice footers, can go straight to a "supplier invoices" mailbox while the general number feeds the front desk.
5. Test with three real correspondents. Ask a regular supplier to send an invoice during the dual-reception period: compare the virtual PDF with the paper original, check that the amounts read, that every page is present and that the timestamp is legible. That is the only test that counts; PDFs generated in-house say nothing about the real machines on the senders' side.

Received PDF quality, the real subject

A fax travels in black and white, sampled around 200 dots per inch: a received PDF is crisp for printed text, mediocre for a table drawn in grey rules and poor for a copy of a copy. Three habits close the gap for accounting. Ask suppliers to send invoices printed from their software, never re-scanned. Check each PDF on arrival — missing page, amount legibility — instead of filing it blind; a source document numbered "page 2 of 5" makes the check easy. Finally, keep the delivery e-mail or the provider's log: it dates the reception, which separates a supplier's late sending from a late treatment on your side when a prescription dispute comes up.

Filing it without thinking

An invoice PDF arrives already indexable: name it on delivery (supplier, date, document number) and it drops into your digital binder with no re-keying. The useful accounting rule is one line long: a received PDF is an original document, it follows the retention period of accounting records, without re-conversion or printing. The general principles of sorting and retention are laid out in our guide to archiving faxes; applied to accounting reception, they fit a single procedure: deliver, check, name, file, leave it alone.

What it costs, against the machine

Virtual reception is paid by monthly subscription — a few tens of euros for an ordinary volume, more beyond a few hundred pages. Facing it, the machine means the purchase, a dedicated phone line, toner, breakdowns and above all handling time: collecting from the tray, scanning, redoing the unreadable ones. For a team receiving ten faxes a month, the subscription costs more than nothing — but the machine is not free either. To arbitrate honestly, run your real volumes through our fax price calculator, which shows the full cost of a fax, handling time included.

And sending, which becomes occasional once reception is virtual? The Faxeroo form takes a PDF straight from the browser, with no account: a single page leaves free of charge, a document of two pages and more falls under the €3.99 incl. VAT flat rate, and the PDF delivery receipt remains an optional €2.99 including VAT — due only when the fax actually lands.