Stop Arguing About Faxes. Automate the Document Workflow.
Online fax is easier than a physical fax machine, removing hardware and paper jams. But both are slow, manual processes that create data entry work downstream.
The real bottleneck is not sending the document; it is getting the information out of the document and into your business software. This is a data problem, not a transmission problem. Manual data entry from faxes is slow, expensive, and a primary source of operational errors.
We built a system for a 7-person logistics company that received over 400 freight invoices via fax each month. Their team spent 6 minutes per invoice on manual data entry. Our AI pipeline now processes each one in under 10 seconds, posting data directly to their accounting system.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Services like eFax or RingCentral Fax deliver a PDF to your inbox. This feels modern, but it just shifts the problem. Instead of a paper jam, you have an inbox full of attachments that someone has to open, read, and manually re-type into a CRM, EMR, or ERP system. The fax service solves the transmission but ignores the data entry work it creates.
A medical practice receiving 30 patient referrals a day via their HIPAA-compliant online fax service faces this daily. An admin assistant opens each PDF, identifies the patient name, referring doctor, and reason for visit, then copies it into their EMR. A single typo in a patient ID can delay care. At 5 minutes per fax, that is 2.5 hours of daily work that is both tedious and high-risk.
Teams then try off-the-shelf OCR software, but these tools are trained on high-resolution scans, not grainy, low-DPI faxes with smudges and alignment issues. They produce character error rates of 15-20%, forcing a human to proofread every single field. This defeats the purpose of automation and often makes the process slower than pure manual entry.
How Does It Work?
We connect directly to your online fax service's email notifications. An AWS Lambda function triggers when a new fax PDF arrives, saving it to a secure S3 bucket. We use Python's pypdf library to split multi-page documents and Pillow to clean up the image, increasing contrast before extraction to improve accuracy.
Each page image is then sent to the Claude 3 Sonnet API. Unlike traditional OCR, Claude understands document layout and context. We provide a JSON schema in the prompt, instructing it to extract specific fields like 'Invoice Number', 'Patient Name', or 'Total Amount'. Claude returns structured JSON data in about 8 seconds with over 99% accuracy on typical machine-printed documents.
The extracted JSON data is validated using Pydantic to ensure all data types are correct (e.g., dates are formatted properly, monetary values are floats). A lightweight FastAPI service then makes a secure API call to your internal system, such as a CRM or a custom database. For a 12-person recruiting firm, we pushed extracted candidate data from resumes directly into their Applicant Tracking System.
All processing is logged using structlog for clear, machine-readable output. If Claude's confidence score is below a 95% threshold for any field, or if Pydantic validation fails, the system flags the document for human review in a simple web interface. The original PDF and extracted data are stored in a Supabase table for 30 days for audit purposes before being purged.
What Are the Key Benefits?
From Fax PDF to CRM in 10 Seconds
Eliminate manual data entry entirely. Our system reads, extracts, and posts fax data to your business systems in less time than it takes to open the file.
A Fixed Price Build, Not a Per-Fax Fee
We scope and deliver the full system for a one-time price. Your monthly cost for AWS Lambda and the Claude API is typically under $50, regardless of user count.
You Own the Python Code and Prompts
We deliver the complete source code to your GitHub repository. You are not locked into our service and can modify the system yourself in the future.
Alerts for Faxes AI Cannot Read
The system automatically flags low-confidence extractions for human review. Nothing gets missed, and you maintain 100% data integrity without proofreading every entry.
Connects to Any System with an API
We build custom integrations to your specific CRM, ERP, or EMR. We have connected to systems like Salesforce, NetSuite, and industry-specific platforms.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Sample Analysis (Week 1)
You provide 20-50 sample faxes. We analyze them and deliver a data schema defining every field to be extracted and its validation rules.
Core Pipeline Build (Week 2)
We build the extraction logic using the Claude API and deploy it on AWS Lambda. You receive a secure endpoint for testing with your documents.
System Integration (Week 3)
We connect the pipeline to your target system (CRM, ERP, etc.). You receive a live demonstration of a fax flowing end-to-end into your software.
Monitoring & Handoff (Weeks 4-6)
We monitor the live system, tune prompts for edge cases, and provide a runbook. You receive the full source code and documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom fax processing system cost?
- The cost depends on the complexity of your documents and the number of fields to extract. A simple invoice with 10 fields is straightforward. A multi-page clinical referral with 50 fields requires more complex logic. Engagements are a fixed price, determined after we analyze your sample documents during a free discovery call.
- What happens if a fax is completely unreadable?
- If the Claude API cannot extract the required data with high confidence, the system will not guess. It sends an alert to a designated Slack channel or email address with the original PDF attached. This creates a manual exception queue, ensuring a human reviews the 1-2% of documents that are too messy for automation.
- How is this different from buying an OCR product like ABBYY FineReader?
- Tools like ABBYY are powerful OCR engines, but they are just one component. They leave you to handle the engineering for email ingestion, cloud deployment, data validation, exception handling, and API integration. Syntora delivers a complete, production-ready system that connects your fax inbox directly to your business software.
- We handle patient data. Is this process HIPAA compliant?
- Yes, the architecture can be made HIPAA compliant. We deploy on AWS services that have a Business Associate Addendum (BAA). Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We configure the system to not log any Protected Health Information (PHI) and to purge documents from storage immediately after processing, minimizing your compliance surface area.
- Do we still need to pay for our online fax service?
- Yes. This system is not a fax service itself. It automates what happens after a fax is received. You will still need a service like eFax or RingCentral to receive faxes and convert them to a digital format. Our system plugs into the email notification you already get from that service.
- What is the typical accuracy rate for data extraction?
- For clear, machine-printed faxes, we achieve over 99% field-level accuracy. For handwritten fields or very poor quality documents, accuracy can drop to 90-95%. We work with you to define a confidence threshold. Any extraction below that threshold is automatically flagged for human review, so you can trust the data that gets entered automatically.
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