Sending a Fax from Best Practice

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Overview

With Pear X-Fax and the email-to-fax option enabled for your practice, you can fax anyone from inside Best Practice without opening the portal at all. You send it exactly as you would send an email. If your practice software can send an email, it can send a fax. That applies to Best Practice, and to any other practice management system with an email window: the fax number goes where the email address normally goes.

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Your practice’s fax domain

Every practice has its own fax email domain, in the form yourpractice.pear.net.au. Pear gives you yours when email-to-fax is set up. The part before .pear.net.au is unique to your practice. If you do not know your practice’s fax domain, log a case using the Support link in the left menu of the portal and we will confirm it.

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Sending a fax from Best Practice

Open the document, letter or result in Best Practice and choose to send it by email as you normally would. In the Bp E-mail window:

1. To: enter the fax number, then @, then your practice’s own fax domain. For example, if your domain is yourpractice.pear.net.au, you would enter 0280729054@yourpractice.pear.net.au. The number must be the full 10 digits including the area code, with no spaces, brackets or dashes.
2. CC: leave blank, or add another fax number the same way to send the same document to a second recipient.
3. Subject: type something that identifies the document, for example “BPS Letter, John Citizen”. This becomes the fax subject and is what you will see in the Fax Mailbox.
4. Attachment: choose PDF. A fax cannot be sent as REF.
5. PIN: leave this unticked. A PIN-protected attachment cannot be opened at the other end.
6. Use account: this is usually your default account. If you are not sure which to use, check with your practice’s Best Practice administrator.
7. Click Send.

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Before it will work

Two things have to be right, and both are worth checking once rather than wondering later. The sending address must be an authorised sender. The email address behind the account in Use account has to be on your practice’s Authorised Senders list in the portal, either as that exact address or as your whole practice domain. If it is not, the fax is rejected. See Authorised Senders for how to add it. The fax number must be 10 digits. Australian fax numbers are area code plus eight digits, for example 0280729054. Leave out the +61, and do not use spaces or punctuation.

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What happens next

The fax appears in your Fax Mailbox in the portal:

• First in the outgoing queue, while it is being sent
• Then on the Sent tab once it has gone through

You do not need to do anything in the portal for the fax to send. The mailbox is where you confirm it went, and where you find it again later. See Fax Mailbox.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I send from any other practice software? Yes. Nothing about this is specific to Best Practice. Any system that can send an email with a PDF attachment can send a fax this way: put the fax number and your practice’s fax domain in the To field. Can I send several documents in one fax? Yes. Attach more than one PDF and they are sent as one fax, in the order they are attached. Does the recipient see my email address? No. They receive a fax. The sending address is used to check you are allowed to send, and to work out which practice the fax belongs to. The fax did not arrive. What do I check first? In order: that the number is the full 10 digits with no spaces, that the attachment was a PDF and PIN was unticked, and that the sending address is on the Authorised Senders list. Then look in the Fax Mailbox to see whether it reached the queue at all. Can I send a fax to an overseas number this way? No. Email-to-fax is for Australian fax numbers.