As the year draws to a close, companies often find themselves wondering: How can we communicate our successes, growth, and challenges to our audience? The answer lies in a well-crafted annual report.
By effectively conveying your organization’s performance, achievements, and goals, a good annual business report can strengthen relationships with investors, employees, and customers. In this post, we’ll explore what is an annual report and how to write an annual report that truly reflects your company’s best moments.
What is an Annual Report?
An annual report is a comprehensive document that organizations publish every year to provide detailed information about their financial performance, activities, and future goals. It serves as a communication tool for investors, employees, customers, regulators, and the public. The annual report also helps companies build trust and transparency with the company’s stakeholders and clients.
You can create your annual report in printed or digital format. Here’s an example of an online annual report.
The Christie NHS Trust Annual Review
Want to create an online report from a PDF?
The Benefits of Creating Annual Reports
Writing an annual business report or nonprofit annual report offers several key benefits for both the company and its stakeholders. Here are some of the main advantages:
🌟Enhancing transparency. Annual reports provide stakeholders with clear, detailed information about a company’s financial performance, business strategies, and operations. This transparency builds trust with investors, customers, and other interested parties, fostering confidence in the company's management.
🌟Strengthening corporate reputation. Publishing a company annual report demonstrates a commitment to accountability, professionalism, and openness. A well-designed, informative report can enhance the company’s reputation, making it more attractive to partners and customers.
🌟Attracting and retaining investors. Investors and analysts rely on annual reports to assess the financial health and performance of a company. Clear, accurate, and comprehensive reports can help attract new investors and retain existing ones by showcasing a company's growth, profitability, and strategic direction.
🌟Showcasing company achievements. An annual report allows a company to highlight significant accomplishments, product innovations, or market expansions, which can attract potential customers or donors. It acts as a promotional tool for the company’s success.
How to Write an Annual Report
Writing an annual report is like taking a walk down memory lane, reflecting on the key events, wins, and challenges of the year. Make it a tradition at the end of each year! To help, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide on writing an effective and professional annual report.
#1 Plan the structure and design
- Define the audience: Understand who will be reading the report—shareholders, investors, employees, customers, or the general public. Tailor the language and focus accordingly.
- Create a layout: Plan the report’s sections and design. It should be clear, well-organized, and visually appealing. Most annual business reports follow a similar structure, but your company may want to add unique elements.
- Choose a format: Decide whether it will be a printed document, a landing page, or an interactive online report.
💡 If you’re aiming for a modern, interactive report, consider opting for an online flipbook format. Digital reports allow companies to showcase their yearly results in a fresh and engaging way, enhancing their content with enticing videos and GIFs, pop-up image galleries, and forms and surveys.
We’ve created several customizable annual report templates in Canva, so that you can craft your own annual report designs and then make them interactive with the help of online report creators, such as FlippingBook.
#2 Write the introduction
The first section of the company annual report is usually a letter from the CEO or chairman. It’s a personal message that introduces the report and highlights key achievements and challenges over the year. It should convey a sense of leadership and vision, setting the tone for the rest of the report. Then, you can include an overview of your company: a brief description of the company’s history, mission, values, and goals.
Intelligent Partnership Industry Report
#3 Provide financial statements
If you want to show that you’re a transparent business, you can add various financial statements to your annual report. Here are some examples of financial information to include:
- Income statement (profit & loss statement): Show the company’s revenue, expenses, and profit or loss over the year.
- Balance sheet: Include assets, liabilities, and shareholder equity, giving a snapshot of the company’s financial position at year-end.
- Cash flow statement: Summarize the cash inflows and outflows during the year, highlighting how the company manages cash resources.
- Statement of shareholder equity: Display changes in equity (e.g., dividends, retained earnings, stock issues).
# 4 Include the management’s discussion and analysis
This section provides context to the financial statements, explaining the numbers and key business events. Thus, you provide insights into how the company navigated the year and what its focus will be moving forward. The section often includes:
- Analysis of revenue growth, profitability, and expenses.
- Discussion on market trends and challenges.
- Management’s plans and strategies.
- Acknowledgment of risks and uncertainties.
#5 Highlight key business achievements
This might be the most exciting section for you to put together. Here you can finally highlight important milestones and accomplishments of the year. Ask all the departments of your company to share what they’re proud of this year and don’t be shy to brag a bit, you totally deserve it! It’s an opportunity to be more human and fun to connect with your readers and show the face behind the company. Here are the main achievements to add:
- New product launches.
- Market expansion or strategic partnerships.
- Awards or recognition received.
- Customer satisfaction or growth metrics.
- Include any major corporate changes, such as leadership transitions or acquisitions.
#6 Address corporate social responsibility and sustainability
No matter what industry you work in, you can follow sustainability principles to make your company more environmentally friendly. If you take part in any kind of sustainable initiatives, share your experience and achievements with your readers. It will help build your reputation as an eco-friendly business and start an important discussion on the future of our planet. These are the themes you can write about:
- Environmental impact (e.g., sustainability efforts, waste reduction).
- Social initiatives (e.g., community outreach, diversity, and inclusion).
- Governance practices (e.g., board composition, executive compensation).
- Efforts that align with company values and contribute to societal well-being.
#7 Provide market and industry insights
This part of a business annual report gives you a great chance to establish your team and business as experts in the industry. If you’ve carried out any research, surveys, or gathered market data, don’t hesitate to add them. Sharing knowledge and insights with your colleagues, clients, and donors will make your report a valuable piece of content for further reading and referencing. You can include the following data:
- Write about your own research or customer surveys and what conclusions you can draw from them that can be useful to your industry.
- Include any relevant market trends or analysis that help explain the company’s performance in a broader context.
- Compare the company’s performance with industry standards or competitors.
- Discuss potential opportunities or threats in the market.
Intelligent Partnership Industry Report
#8 Discuss plans and strategic goals
Dream big but be reasonable, as we can’t predict what will happen in the next week, let alone the whole year. So try to add broader goals that your company plans to follow, as this section helps set expectations and assures stakeholders that the company has a clear direction. A good idea is to include a roadmap for the company’s future, detailing:
- Strategic priorities for the coming year.
- Goals for growth, innovation, or market positioning.
- Challenges that may affect future performance, and how the company plans to overcome them.
#9 Conclude the report
End the report with a summary or closing statement that shows that your company is committed to achieving its strategic goals and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships. It would also be nice to include a letter of appreciation to employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders for their support. You can even create success stories or carry out short interviews with those who support you: from donors to employees and volunteers. It will add some more human touch to the report.
#10 Add visuals and graphics
When the text of your company annual report is ready, you can move on to the next step—making the content more interactive and visually appealing. Here’s what you can do:
- Incorporate charts, graphs, and infographics to illustrate key financial data, trends, and achievements. These visual aids make the report more readable and help to clarify complex information.
- Include photographs that reflect company culture, milestones, or community involvement, making the report more relatable and visually rich.
If you create an online annual report, you’ll have amazing opportunities to empower it with interactivity:
- Pop-up image galleries allow you to display more content in a gallery than you would on a page and save space. Plus, you can showcase high-quality graphs and photos, giving your audience the best reading experience.
- Videos boost conversions and are a great storytelling format. You can complement the sections of your report with videos to make it more interactive and enticing.
- GIFs help you show complex data in an easy and engaging way, so add them instead of static photos to catch your readers’ attention right away.
Want to enhance your report with interactivity?
#11 Edit and proofread
It goes without saying that your annual report should be written and designed professionally, so take time to check and test its contents and look:
- Ensure the report is clear, accurate, and free of errors. Double-check the financial data and facts.
- Ensure the report is consistent in tone and language. Maintain professionalism while being transparent and accessible.
- If the report is to be published online or in a digital format, make sure it’s mobile-friendly and compliant.
Checklist for Writing a Powerful Annual Report
To wrap up, let’s go through the checklist to make sure your annual report has all the necessary qualities to become a great read:
✅Be transparent: Stakeholders appreciate transparency. Share both successes and setbacks to build trust.
✅Tell a story: People respond to storytelling. Weave the organization’s data into a narrative about growth, impact, and change.
✅Use data effectively: Support claims with concrete numbers, but ensure the data is easy to understand. Charts and visuals can break down complex information.
✅Stay focused: Don’t overwhelm readers with unnecessary information. Keep the report concise and relevant.
