Preliminary Work in an Annual Report
Bear in mind that when preparing your annual report, your target readers are your shareholders, stakeholders, business analysts and more importantly, potential investors. Generally, the annual report must provide information about your business. Information must:
- Be researched and presented in a formal manner
- Include information including business operations and processes
- Listing of your company’s financial position
Segments in your Annual Report
Being a part of corporate reporting, the annual report is designed based on a certain format as required by law. This is usually provided by the Securities Commission of the country. While the format of annual reports varies among companies, the information that is mostly included must have:
- Address by the Chairman – This could be the CEO or the president (or whoever the head is). It is an introduction by the main person who will talk about significant developments that have taken place in the last financial year. This segment also covers what the company is planning to do in the coming 12 months. The Chairman would also talk about the direction of the company is heading and the challenges that it faced.
- Profile of the company – This segment is extremely important as it highlights the vision and mission of the company. The profile and details of the management team is also here including the board of directors. It will also include registration information of the business, the main revenue source (products or services), risk and competitor profile as well.
- Strategic plans – This segment will report how the company has performed in the last few years (usually 3). You must also report and discuss crucial factors like sales, income and your margins in that few years. Should there be any drastic changes in your business (like the launching of new products) or if you hired a new management figure, it should be discussed here as the stakeholders will want to know.
- Financial Statements – This is the numbers segment. It is an integral part of the annual report that current and potential investors will be interested in. Besides them, other parties that might take an interest in your numbers are shareholders and your employees. Your financial statements will let them gauge if your company is moving in the right direction, your ability to pay your debts and expansion plans (if any). This segment will include the income statement, cash flow, balance sheet and others.
- Other additional information – The segments above must be part of your annual report. However, you might add other information such as further elaboration of certain issues, feedback or report from auditors, exceptions and images to better present your information to the readers.
Structure and Flow
Bear in mind that your annual report must tell a story.
- The words you use and apply must be clear and precise.
- Language must be formal and unbiased.
- Content must not be ambiguous at any point and should be as transparent as possible.
- The layout should have a professional outlook as they portray your company and is an important marketing tool.
Hire the professionals for your Annual Report
In order to produce a professional annual report, the process will involve a lot of planning and design. When engaging Advertising.my to publish and design your company’s annual report, you can rest assure that we will only use the best materials and involve the most professional people to assist you.
It is vital that your company’s annual report reflects your company’s image and corporate identity as it will deliver all the information about your company to your shareholders and potential investors. This is an important part of your corporate communication efforts where our team of designers takes into consideration very seriously.
The publication of your annual report will involve a very detailed planning stage where our designers will take the pictures and images needed for the report. Our copywriters will conduct an initial research to determine what information to be included. After that, the copywriters will derive the first draft for your preview.
We will ensure that all the text used in the annual report are appropriate and industry relevant. Once your approval on the text is obtained, we will proceed with the design of the layout. This is where our designers will be involved where they will derive the initial designs of the outlook of your report.
