Update: Avoid efax at all costs, after they started sending me spam faxes (and charging me for them!) I tried to cancel and was told I had to call Hong Kong for the privilege. Long story short, find somebody else – there are lot’s of digital fax companies, but do your research.

Today I needed to scan my credit card and send it to escrow.com in order to complete a domain name transfer. Having recently moved and being that I lost my printer cable in the process this could have been quite a challenge.

But then I realized my iPhone could probably handle everything I needed to do, so below is an outline on the process if, like most people you think faxes are stupid, pointless and redundant, but still a necessary part of conducting business these days.

You will need:

• An iPhone
• Internet Connection
• A credit card (though you can probably get around this)
• Zosh application for iPhone
• Image Editor (I use Fireworks but even MS Paint will probably work)
• Adobe Acrobat (or a way to edit PDF files)

Step 1 – Scanning Alternative

1. Using your iphone take a photo of what you need to scan. (Note: I needed to scan a credit card which came up clearly but if you need to clearly scan a document you might have some trouble.)
2. Email photo(s) to yourself.
3. Using an image editor position the photo’s where you need them to go, you may need to crop them first.

Now that you have the document you need to sign it and fax it.

Step 2 – Signing It

1. Open the image in your PDF editor, save it and send it to your email
2. Open your email and email the PDF to your Zosh account (mydocs@zosh.com) – you’ll need to create a Zosh account if you haven’t done this already.
3. Open the Zosh App on your iphone, click insert, signature, sign and then position your signature.
4. Now email the new, signed Zosh PDF back to yourself.

Finally you need to fax the document to it’s recipient.

Step 3 – Faxing

I used efax.com and started out on the free trial, I’m sure there are cheaper alternatives but I was in a hurry and since I will probably need this service again I’m happy to pay for it as long as it means I don’t need to have a fax machine lying around.

1. Create an efax account, login, click send fax, enter recipients details, and your done!

Note the entire process took me about 30 minutes, which is obviously considerably longer than if I had the right tools to begin with, but if you don’t have a fax or even a printer this could be a life saver.