how to write a report with sample

👀 Turn any prompt into captivating visuals in seconds with our AI-powered design generator ✨ Try Piktochart AI!

• Piktochart Visual
• Video Editor
• AI Design Generator
• Infographic Maker
• Banner Maker
• Brochure Maker
• Diagram Maker
• Flowchart Maker
• Flyer Maker
• Graph Maker
• Invitation Maker
• Pitch Deck Creator
• Poster Maker
• Presentation Maker
• Report Maker
• Resume Maker
• Social Media Graphic Maker
• Timeline Maker
• Venn Diagram Maker
• Screen Recorder
• Social Media Video Maker
• Video Cropper
• Video to Text Converter
• Video Views Calculator
• AI Brochure Maker
• AI Document Generator
• AI Flyer Generator
• AI Infographic
• AI Instagram Post Generator
• AI Newsletter Generator
• AI Report Generator
• AI Timeline Generator
• For Communications
• For Education
• For eLearning
• For Financial Services
• For Healthcare
• For Human Resources
• For Marketing
• For Nonprofits
• Brochure Templates
• Flyer Templates
• Infographic Templates
• Newsletter Templates
• Presentation Templates
• Resume Templates
• Business Infographics
• Business Proposals
• Education Templates
• Health Posters
• HR Templates
• Sales Presentations
• Community Template
• Explore all free templates on Piktochart
• Course: What is Visual Storytelling?
• The Business Storyteller Podcast
• User Stories
• Video Tutorials
• Need help? Check out our Help Center
• Earn money as a Piktochart Affiliate Partner
• Compare prices and features across Free, Pro, and Enterprise plans.
• For professionals and small teams looking for better brand management.
• For organizations seeking enterprise-grade onboarding, support, and SSO.
• Discounted plan for students, teachers, and education staff.
• Great causes deserve great pricing. Registered nonprofits pay less.

How to Write a Report (2023 Guide & Free Templates)

You have a report due in a few days, but you’re still procrastinating like a pro.

Sounds familiar?

If you’ve been staring at a blank page, wondering how to write a report the best way possible, you’re not alone. For many, writing a report, especially for the first time, can feel like rolling a giant boulder uphill.

The good news is that from a first draft to creating reports that people love to read is a skill you can develop and polish over time.

Whether you’re a student, a professional, or someone who wants to up their report-writing game, keep reading for a 2023 guide and step-by-step instructions on how to write a report. Plus, learn about the basic report format.

You’ll also get access to report templates that you can edit and customize immediately and learn about a tool to make reports online (no need to download software!). You can also jump right into customizing templates by creating a free account .

What is report writing?

Report writing is a way of communicating information, data, insight, or analysis. It’s an essential skill that will come in handy in various settings, from academic research or diving into historical events to business meetings.

But creating a report can be a bit intimidating at first.

In its simplest form, report writing starts with researching and gathering all the information, analyzing your findings, and presenting it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand.

Sounds easy enough, right? 

Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. We’ll guide you through every step of the process to write an entire report from a rough draft and data in the next section. 

But first, let’s get to know the different types of reports.

Types of reports

Reports come in all shapes and sizes, and the type of report you write will depend on your specific goals and audience. Each type of report has its unique purpose, format, and style.

The most common types of reports are: 

• Academic report – These include school reports, book reports, thesis reports, or analytical reports between two opposing ideas.
• Business report – Business reports range from annual reports to SWOT analyses . The goal of business reports is to communicate ideas, information, or insights in a business setting.
• Research report –  Research reports are often more scientific or methodological in nature. They can take the form of case studies or research papers. 

Learn more : 20 Types of Reports and When to Use Them (Plus Templates)

How to write a report without feeling overwhelmed

Breaking down the report writing process into three stages can make it much more manageable for you, especially if it’s your first time to create one. 

These three stages are: 

• Pre-writing stage
• Writing stage
• Post-writing stage

Let’s take a look at the steps for each stage and how to write a good report in 2023 that you can be proud of.

Stage 1: Pre-writing 

The pre-writing stage is all about preparation. Take some time to gather your thoughts and organize your main idea. Write a summary first.

Here are important steps to help you deal with the overwhelm of creating an insightful report. 

Understand the purpose of your report

Knowing your purpose will help you focus and stay on track throughout the process. Dig into the why of your report through these questions:

• Who is your intended reader? Are you familiar with your audience’s language and how they think?
• What are you trying to achieve with your report? Are you trying to inform, persuade, or recommend a course of action to the reader? 

Research your topic

It’s time to gather as much information as you can about your topic. This might involve reading books, articles, and other reports. You might also need to conduct interviews with subject matter experts.

Pro tip on how to write a report : Pick reputable sources like research papers, recently-published books, and case studies by trustworthy authors. 

Make a report outline

An outline is a roadmap for your report. It covers your title, introduction, thesis statement, main points, and conclusion. Organizing your thoughts this way will help you keep focus and ensure you cover all the necessary information.

While you can create a report without creating an outline, you could write a better report with an outline. An outline helps you organize your facts and important points on paper. 

Stage 2: Writing

Once you have completed the pre-writing stage, it’s time to write your report. 

Follow the proper report writing format

You will feel a lot of resistance at this point because this is where most of the tedious work of report writing happens. However, the process can be a breeze if you follow a proper structure and report writing format.

The structure of your report can vary depending on the type of report you’re creating, but the report writing format below can serve as a guide for anyone.

• Title page. This is the first page of your report and should include the report’s title, the author’s name, the date of presentation or submission, and any other relevant information, such as your name or the organization’s name.
• Table of Contents (TOC ). This section contains subsections of your report and their corresponding page numbering.  A well-written TOC will help readers navigate your report easily and find the information they need.
• Brief summary . This part provides an overview of the report’s particular purpose, subject, methodology, key findings, and recommendations. This section is often called the executive summary in corporate reports.
• Introduction . The introduction should provide background information about the topic and explain why the report was written. It should also state the aims and objectives of your report and give an overview of the methodology used to gather and analyze the data. Make sure you include a powerful topic sentence.
• Main body. The main body of the report should be divided into subsections, each dealing with a specific aspect of the topic. These sections should be clearly labeled and organized in a logical order. In most reports, this is also the part where you explain and present your findings, analysis, and recommendations.
• Conclusion. Summarize the main points of your report and provide a final summary, thought, or suggestions. Review your thesis statement. The conclusion also includes any limitations of the study and areas for further research or future action.
• References . This section should include a list of all the sources cited in the report, like books, journal articles, websites, and any other sources used to gather information on your subject.
• Appendices . In the appendices section, you should include any additional information relevant to the report but not in the article’s main body. This might consist of raw data, event details, graphs, charts, or tables.

With all these key report elements, your readers can look forward to an informative, well-organized, and easy-to-read report.

Pro tips: Remember to use clear and concise language in your essay. It is also required to follow a specific type of formatting set by your organization or instructor.

Plus, use the active voice when you can because it helps improve clarity. To write a report essay in a passive voice makes it sound less concise.

Reports should usually be written in the third person.

Edit and proofread the article

Once you have completed your first essay draft, take some time to edit and proofread your work. Look for spelling mistakes and grammar errors, as well as any areas where the flow of your article could be improved. Review your topic sentence.

If hiring a professional editor isn’t possible, have a colleague or someone else read your rough draft and provide feedback. You can also use tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway App . 

Stage 3: Post-writing

You’re almost there! This stage is about finalizing your report and ensuring it is ready to be shared. 

Format your report

Ensure your report is formatted correctly, with clear and easy-to-read fonts, headings, and subheadings.

Incorporate visuals

Adding visuals to your report article is another great way to help your audience understand complex information more easily.

From charts to illustrations, the right visual can help highlight and explain key points, events, trends, and patterns in your data, making it easier for the reader to interpret the information.

Want to check out more templates? Get access to the template gallery today .

However, it’s important to use visuals sparingly and ensure they are relevant and effectively support the texts. You will learn more about effectively incorporating visuals into your report as you scroll down below to the next sections. 

Share your report

Once your report is complete, share it with your audience. This might involve submitting it to your boss, presenting it to a group, or sharing it online.

A final note for this section: Remember to take your time, stay organized, and most importantly, have fun! Writing a report can be a rewarding experience, especially if you get positive feedback when you present.

How to add visuals to your report

Adding visuals to your report is more than just putting a graph or chart for every piece of information.

There are no hard and fast rules but use the pointers below as guidelines:

• Each visual in your report should have a purpose. Don’t just add a pie chart or bar graph for the sake of adding one. Your visual of choice should offer clarity to readers that’s impossible to achieve with words alone. Piktochart’s report maker lets you search for free stock images and illustrations to add to any page with drag and drop.
• Add captions, legends, or arrows to your visuals when possible. For more technical reports, graphics are either Tables or Figures. Number them in order of appearance (Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, etc.) and give each a descriptive title.
• Place the visual close to the relevant text on the page.
• Document the source of the visual, citing it in both the caption and references section if necessary.
• Make the graphic stand out with colors, borders, boxes, spacing, and frames.

Learn more : How to Improve Your Data Visualization Design in 6 Steps 

Write reports like a pro with Piktochart’s easy-to-edit report templates

Creating reports from scratch can be time-consuming. The great news is you don’t have to make reports from scratch like how it used to be in the 90s and early 2000s. Organizations of all shapes and sizes now understand that you can also create the perfect report with the help of templates.

For example, Piktochart offers a variety of fully customizable templates, allowing you to easily add your branding, colors, and text within the online editor. You can visualize your thesis statement and first draft in less than an hour. It’s also possible to start writing directly in the tool, adding graphics page by page.

These templates range from reports for school presentations to sales reports. By editing them, you can create professional-looking reports without the hassle of formatting and design.

Here are some examples of Piktochart’s professionally-designed templates. If you can’t pick one that matches your report writing format and needs, create a free Piktochart account to get access to more templates. 

Survey report template 

This survey report template includes clear visualizations, making your report findings easier to understand. From customer surveys to employee satisfaction reports, this template is quite versatile. 

Research report template 

This research report template is perfect for anyone looking to create a thorough and professional research report. The template includes all the necessary sections to help you easily organize your research and present your findings in a concise document.

Corporate report template 

Looking for a corporate report template example with an editable table of contents and foreword? This template is the perfect fit!

Whether you’re presenting to investors or sharing information with your team, this corporate report template will help you create a polished and informative executive summary for any corporate organization.

Case study report template

Whether you’re conducting a business case study or an academic case study, this case study report template can help you earn your readers’ trust. This template is specifically designed with fashion as its main theme, but you can edit the photos and details to make it more on-brand with your niche.

Marketing report template

Use this template to create comprehensive marketing reports. The template includes editable sections for social media, data from search engines, email marketing, and paid ads. 

Financial report template 

With this customizable finance report template, you don’t need to make a financial report from scratch. Once you’ve written your content, save your report in PDF or PNG formats.

Annual report template 

This annual report template is the right template for creating a professional and informative executive summary of your organization’s performance over the past year. This template was designed for HR annual reports, but you can also repurpose it for other types of yearly reports. 

See more report templates by creating a free Piktochart account . 

Quick checklist for better report writing

Before you submit or present your report, use the quick checklist below to help ensure that your report is well-structured, accurate, clear, and properly cited. Most of all, you must ensure that your report meets your audience’s expectations and has all the information and details they need. 

Purpose and audience

• Does the report address its purpose and meet the needs of the intended audience?

Structure and organization

• Is the material appropriately arranged in sections?
• Have irrelevant details been removed?

Accuracy and analysis

• Has all the material been checked for accuracy?
• Are graphs and tables clearly labeled? Check the page numbers too.
• Is the data in graphs or tables analyzed and explained in words?
• Does the discussion or conclusion show how the results relate to the objectives mentioned in the introduction?
• Have the results been compared with existing research from the literature survey?

Writing style and clarity

• Is the report written in a tone that’s indicated in the brand style guide (for corporate reports)? Does it avoid colloquialisms or contractions? 
• Does it follow the organization’s specific guidelines for writing style? 
• Is it jargon-free and clearly written? Have you translated technical terms into simpler words?
• Use the active voice when you can because it helps improve clarity. A written report in a passive voice may make it sound less concise. 

Acknowledgment and citation

• Have all ideas and event data taken from or inspired by someone else’s work been acknowledged with a reference?
• Have all illustrations and figures taken from someone else’s work been cited correctly?

Proofreading

• Has the report been carefully proofread for typos, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes?

Make engaging and effective reports quickly with Piktochart

Writing a report is a must-have skill for anyone looking to communicate more effectively in their personal and professional lives. 

With the steps we’ve provided in this guide, anyone can learn how to write a report that is informative, engaging, and comprehensive.

Plus, the free templates we highlighted are valuable for individuals looking to create reports quickly and efficiently. They can also be used to transform a longer report filled with texts into something more engaging and easy to digest.

Sign up for a free Piktochart account today, and look forward to writing reports with its library of modern, customizable report templates. 

Piktochart offers professionally designed templates for all your visual communication needs. It is your one-stop shop for presentations , posters , logos , email signatures , infographics , and more. Customize all templates according to your brand assets in seconds. Get started for free today.

Other Posts

10 Best Sales Report Templates for Tracking Revenue, KPIs & Growth

10 Types of HR Reports (With Templates and Examples)

7 Captivating Report Design Ideas And Tips (With Templates and Examples)

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Official Writing
• Report Writing

How to Write a Report

Last Updated: March 15, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Emily Listmann, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Amy Bobinger . Emily Listmann is a private tutor in San Carlos, California. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014. There are 22 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 8,735,053 times.

When you’re assigned to write a report, it can seem like an intimidating process. Fortunately, if you pay close attention to the report prompt, choose a subject you like, and give yourself plenty of time to research your topic, you might actually find that it’s not so bad. After you gather your research and organize it into an outline, all that’s left is to write out your paragraphs and proofread your paper before you hand it in!

Easy Steps to Write a Report

• Choose an interesting topic and narrow it down to a specific idea.
• Take notes as you research your topic. Come up with a thesis, or main theme of your report, based on your research.
• Outline the main ideas you’ll cover in your report. Then, write the first draft.

Sample Reports

Selecting Your Topic

• The guidelines will also typically tell you the requirements for the structure and format of your report.
• If you have any questions about the assignment, speak up as soon as possible. That way, you don’t start working on the report, only to find out you have to start over because you misunderstood the report prompt.

• For instance, if your report is supposed to be on a historical figure, you might choose someone you find really interesting, like the first woman to be governor of a state in the U.S., or the man who invented Silly Putty.
• If your report is about information technology , you could gather information about the use of computers to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data or information.
• Even if you don’t have the option to choose your topic, you can often find something in your research that you find interesting. If your assignment is to give a report on the historical events of the 1960s in America, for example, you could focus your report on the way popular music reflected the events that occurred during that time.

Tip: Always get approval from your teacher or boss on the topic you choose before you start working on the report!

• If you’re not sure what to write about at first, pick a larger topic, then narrow it down as you start researching.
• For instance, if you wanted to do your report on World Fairs, then you realize that there are way too many of them to talk about, you might choose one specific world fair, such as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, to focus on.
• However, you wouldn’t necessarily want to narrow it down to something too specific, like “Food at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,” since it could be hard to find sources on the subject without just listing a lot of recipes.

Researching the Report

• If you don’t have guidelines on how many sources to use, try to find 1-2 reputable sources for each page of the report.
• Sources can be divided into primary sources, like original written works, court records, and interviews, and secondary sources, like reference books and reviews.
• Databases, abstracts, and indexes are considered tertiary sources, and can be used to help you find primary and secondary sources for your report. [5] X Research source
• If you’re writing a business report , you may be given some supplementary materials, such as market research or sales reports, or you may need to compile this information yourself. [6] X Research source

• Librarians are an excellent resource when you're working on a report. They can help you find books, articles, and other credible sources.
• Often, a teacher will limit how many online sources you can use. If you find most of the information you need in the library, you can then use your online sources for details that you couldn’t find anywhere else.

Tip: Writing a report can take longer than you think! Don't put off your research until the last minute , or it will be obvious that you didn't put much effort into the assignment.

• Examples of authoritative online sources include government websites, articles written by known experts, and publications in peer-reviewed journals that have been published online.

• If you’re using a book as one of your sources, check the very back few pages. That’s often where an author will list the sources they used for their book.

• Remember to number each page of your notes, so you don’t get confused later about what information came from which source!
• Remember, you’ll need to cite any information that you use in your report; however, exactly how you do this will depend on the format that was assigned to you.

• For most reports, your thesis statement should not contain your own opinions. However, if you're writing a persuasive report, the thesis should contain an argument that you will have to prove in the body of the essay.
• An example of a straightforward report thesis (Thesis 1) would be: “The three main halls of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition were filled with modern creations of the day and were an excellent representation of the innovative spirit of the Progressive era.”
• A thesis for a persuasive report (Thesis 2) might say: “The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was intended as a celebration of the Progressive spirit, but actually harbored a deep racism and principle of white supremacy that most visitors chose to ignore or celebrate.”

• The purpose of an outline is to help you to visualize how your essay will look. You can create a straightforward list or make a concept map , depending on what makes the most sense to you.
• Try to organize the information from your notes so it flows together logically. For instance, it can be helpful to try to group together related items, like important events from a person’s childhood, education, and career, if you’re writing a biographical report.
• Example main ideas for Thesis 1: Exhibits at the Court of the Universe, Exhibits at the Court of the Four Seasons, Exhibits at the Court of Abundance.

Tip: It can help to create your outline on a computer in case you change your mind as you’re moving information around.

Writing the First Draft

• Try to follow any formatting instructions to the letter. If there aren't any, opt for something classic, like 12-point Times New Roman or Arial font, double-spaced lines, and 1 in (2.5 cm) margins all around.
• You'll usually need to include a bibliography at the end of the report that lists any sources you used. You may also need a title page , which should include the title of the report, your name, the date, and the person who requested the report.
• For some types of reports, you may also need to include a table of contents and an abstract or summary that briefly sums up what you’ve written. It’s typically easier to write these after you’ve finished your first draft. [14] X Research source

• Example Intro for Thesis 1: “The Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) of 1915 was intended to celebrate both the creation of the Panama Canal, and the technological advancements achieved at the turn of the century. The three main halls of the PPIE were filled with modern creations of the day and were an excellent representation of the innovative spirit of the Progressive era.”

• Typically, you should present the most important or compelling information first.
• Example topic sentence for Thesis 1: At the PPIE, the Court of the Universe was the heart of the exposition and represented the greatest achievements of man, as well as the meeting of the East and the West.

Tip: Assume that your reader knows little to nothing about the subject. Support your facts with plenty of details and include definitions if you use technical terms or jargon in the paper.

• Paraphrasing means restating the original author's ideas in your own words. On the other hand, a direct quote means using the exact words from the original source in quotation marks, with the author cited.
• For the topic sentence listed above about the Court of the Universe, the body paragraph should go on to list the different exhibits found at the exhibit, as well as proving how the Court represented the meeting of the East and West.
• Use your sources to support your topic, but don't plagiarize . Always restate the information in your own words. In most cases, you'll get in serious trouble if you just copy from your sources word-for-word. Also, be sure to cite each source as you use it, according to the formatting guidelines you were given. [18] X Research source

• Your commentary needs to be at least 1-2 sentences long. For a longer report, you may write more sentences for each piece of commentary.

• Avoid presenting any new information in the conclusion. You don’t want this to be a “Gotcha!” moment. Instead, it should be a strong summary of everything you’ve already told the reader.

Revising Your Report

• A good question to ask yourself is, “If I were someone reading this report for the first time, would I feel like I understood the topic after I finished reading?

Tip: If you have time before the deadline, set the report aside for a few days . Then, come back and read it again. This can help you catch errors you might otherwise have missed.

• Try reading the report to yourself out loud. Hearing the words can help you catch awkward language or run-on sentences you might not catch by reading it silently.

• This is a great trick to find spelling errors or grammatical mistakes that your eye would otherwise just scan over.

• Ask your helper questions like, “Do you understand what I am saying in my report?” “Is there anything you think I should take out or add?” And “Is there anything you would change?”

• If you have any questions about the assignment requirements, ask your instructor. It's important to know how they'll be grading your assignment.

Expert Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/reports/writing-up
• ↑ https://emory.libanswers.com/faq/44525
• ↑ https://opentextbc.ca/writingforsuccess/chapter/chapter-7-sources-choosing-the-right-ones/
• ↑ https://libguides.merrimack.edu/research_help/Sources
• ↑ https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1779625/VBS-Report-Writing-Guide-2017.pdf
• ↑ https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/primary-sources/
• ↑ https://libguides.scu.edu.au/harvard/secondary-sources
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/taking-notes-while-reading/
• ↑ https://wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/how-to-write-a-thesis-statement.html
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/outline
• ↑ https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/engl250oer/chapter/10-4-table-of-contents/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/
• ↑ https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/report-writing-format
• ↑ https://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-samples/assignment-types/writing-an-essay/writing-body-paragraphs
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/5-most-effective-methods-for-avoiding-plagiarism/
• ↑ https://wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/using-evidence.html
• ↑ https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/writing-report
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/grammarpunct/proofreading/
• ↑ https://opentextbc.ca/writingforsuccess/chapter/chapter-12-peer-review-and-final-revisions/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/

About This Article

It can seem really hard to write a report, but it will be easier if you choose an original topic that you're passionate about. Once you've got your topic, do some research on it at the library and online, using reputable sources like encyclopedias, scholarly journals, and government websites. Use your research write a thesis statement that sums up the focus of your paper, then organize your notes into an outline that supports that thesis statement. Finally, expand that outline into paragraph form. Read on for tips from our Education co-author on how to format your report! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

NIYONSENGA J.

Did this article help you?

Bella McKinnon

Mar 10, 2018

Manasseh M.

Mar 20, 2023

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Don’t miss out! Sign up for

wikiHow’s newsletter

Ultimate Guide on How to Write a Report Tips and Sample

Defining a Report

A report is a type of writing that represents information, data, and research findings on a specific topic. The writer is expected to deliver a well-structured, credible, and informative text that dives into the small details of a certain topic, discussing its benefits and challenges.

Reports serve many important purposes. They provide recorded facts and findings. They are used to analyze data and draw insights that can be used for decision-making. Some reports serve as compliance checks to ensure that organizations meet certain standards and requirements. Also, reports are a formal way to communicate valuable information to decision-makers and stakeholders.

A report paper can be academic or about sales, science, business, etc. But unlike other texts, report writing takes much more than getting acquainted with the subject and forming an opinion about it. Report preparation is the most important stage of the writing process. Whether you are assigned to write an academic or a sales paper, before you start writing, you must do thorough research on the topic and ensure that every source of information is trustworthy.

Report writing has its rules. In this article, we will cover everything from how to start a report to how to format one. Below you will find a student research report sample. Check our paper writer service if you want one designed specifically for your requirements.

Student Research Report Sample

Before you read our article on how to write an act essay , see what an informative and well-structured report looks like. Below you will find a sample report that follows the format and tips we suggested in the article.

Explore and learn more about comprehensive but concise reports.

What are the Report Types

As mentioned, there are plenty of different types of report papers. Even though they are very formal, academic reports are only one of many people will come across in their lifetime. Some reports concentrate on the annual performance of a company, some on a project's progress, and others on scientific findings.

Next, we will elaborate more on different sorts of reports, their contents, and their purpose. Don't forget to also check out our report example that you can find below.

Academic Reports

An academic report represents supported data and information about a particular subject. This could be a historical event, a book, or a scientific finding. The credibility of such academic writing is very important as it, in the future, could be used as a backup for dissertations, essays, and other academic work.

Students are often assigned to write reports to test their understanding of a topic. They also provide evidence of the student's ability to critically analyze and synthesize information. It also demonstrates the student's writing skills and ability to simply convey complex findings and ideas.

Remember that the report outline will affect your final grade when writing an academic report. If you want to learn about the correct report writing format, keep reading the article. If you want to save time, you can always buy essays online .

Project Reports

Every project has numerous stakeholders who like to keep an eye on how things are going. This can be challenging if the number of people who need to be kept in the loop is high. One way to ensure everyone is updated and on the same page is periodic project reports.

Project managers are often assigned to make a report for people that affect the project's fate. It is a detailed document that summarizes the work done during the project and the work that needs to be completed. It informs about deadlines and helps form coherent expectations. Previous reports can be used as a reference point as the project progresses.

Sales Reports

Sales reports are excellent ways to keep your team updated on your sales strategies. It provides significant information to stakeholders, including managers, investors, and executives, so they can make informed decisions about the direction of their business.

A sales report usually provides information about a company's sales performance over a precise period. These reports include information about the revenue generated, the total number of units sold, and other metrics that help the company define the success of sales performance.

Sales report preparation is a meticulous job. To communicate information engagingly, you can put together graphs showing various information, including engagement increase, profit margins, and more.

Business Reports

If you were assigned a business report, something tells us you are wondering how to write a report for work. Let us tell you that the strategy is not much different from writing an academic report. A Strong thesis statement, compelling storytelling, credible sources, and correct format are all that matter.

Business reports can take many forms, such as marketing reports, operational reports, market research reports, feasible studies, and more. The purpose of such report writing is to provide analysis and recommendations to support decision-making and help shape a company's future strategy.

Most business reports include charts, graphs, and other visual aids that help illustrate key points and make complex information easy to digest. 

Scientific Reports

Scientific reports present the results of scientific research or investigation to a specific audience. Unlike book reports, a scientific report is always reviewed by other experts in the field for its accuracy, quality, and relevance.

If you are a scientist or a science student, you can't escape writing a lab report. You will need to provide background information on the research topic and explain the study's purpose. A scientific report includes a discussion part where the researcher interprets the results and significance of the study.

Whether you are assigned to write medical reports or make a report about new findings in the field of physics, your writing should always have an introduction, methodology, results, conclusion, and references. These are the foundation of a well-written report.

Annual Reports

An annual report is a comprehensive piece of writing that provides information about a company's performance over a year. In its nature, it might remind us of extended financial reports.

Annual reports represent types of longer reports. They usually include an overview of a company's activities, a financial summary, detailed product and service information, and market conditions. But it's not just a report of the company's performance in the sales market, but also an overview of its social responsibility programs and sustainability activities.

The format of annual report writing depends on the company's specific requirements, the needs of its stakeholder, and the regulation of the country it's based.

Writing Reports Are Not Your Thing?

Our professional writers will get you any report type meeting your requirements in no time

Report Format

As we've seen throughout this article, various types of reports exist. And even though their content differs, they share one essential element: report writing format. Structure, research methods, grammar, and reference lists are equally important to different reports.

Keep in mind that while the general format is the same for every type, you still need to check the requirements of the assigned report before writing one. School reports, lab reports, and financial reports are three different types of the same category.

We are now moving on to discuss the general report format. Let's direct our attention to how to start a report.

Title : You need a comprehensive but concise title to set the right tone and make a good impression. It should be reflective of the general themes in the report.

Table of Contents : Your title page must be followed by a table of contents. We suggest writing an entire report first and creating a table of content later.

Summary : The table of contents should be followed by an executive report summary. To create a comprehensive summary, wait until you have finished writing the full report.

Introduction : A major part of the report structure is an introduction. Make sure you convey the main idea of the report in just a few words. The introduction section must also include a strong thesis statement.

Body : The central part of your work is called the report's body. Here you should present relevant information and provide supported evidence. Make sure every paragraph starts with a topic sentence. Here you can use bullet points, graphs, and other visual aids.

Conclusion : Use this part to summarize your findings and focus on the main elements and what they bring to the table. Do not introduce new ideas. Good report writing means knowing the difference between a summary and a conclusion.

Recommendations : A report is designed to help decision-makers or provide crucial information to the conversation, including a set of goals or steps that should be taken to further advance the progress.

Appendices : As a finishing touch, include a list of source materials on which you based the information and facts. If you want your report to get acknowledged, don't neglect this part of the report format.

How to Write a Report Like a PRO

Mastering the report writing format is only a fraction of the job. Writing an exceptional report takes more than just including a title page and references.

Next, we will offer report-writing tips to help you figure out how to write a report like a PRO. Meanwhile, if you need someone to review your physics homework, our physics helper is ready to take on the job.

Start With a Strong Thesis

A strong thesis is essential to a good paper because it sets the direction for the rest. It should provide a well-defined but short summary of the main points and arguments made in the report.

A strong thesis can help you collect your thoughts and ensure that the report has a course and a coherent structure. It will help you stay focused on key points and tie every paragraph into one entity.

A clear thesis will make your report writing sound more confident and persuasive. It will make finding supporting evidence easier, and you will be able to effectively communicate your ideas to the reader.

Use Simple Wording

Reports are there to gather and distribute as much information to as many people as possible. So, the content of it should be accessible and understandable for everyone, despite their knowledge in the field. We encourage you to use simple words instead of fancy ones when writing reports for large audiences.

Other academic papers might require you to showcase advanced language knowledge and extensive vocabulary. Still, formal reports should present information in a way that does not confuse.

If you are wondering how to make report that is easy to read and digest, try finding simpler alternatives to fancy words. For example, use 'example' instead of 'paradigm'; Use 'relevant' instead of 'pertinent'; 'Exacerbate' is a fancier way to say 'worsen,' and while it makes you look educated, it might cause confusion and make you lose the reader. Choose words that are easier to understand.

Present Only One Concept in Each Phrase

Make your reports easier to understand by presenting only one concept in each paragraph. Simple, short sentences save everyone's time and make complex concepts easier to digest and memorize. 

Report writing is not a single-use material. It will be reread and re-used many times. Someone else might use your sales report to support their financial report. So, to avoid confusion and misinterpretation, start each paragraph with a topic sentence and tie everything else into this main theme.

Only Present Reliable Facts

You might have a strong hunch about future events or outcomes, but a research report is not a place to voice them. Everything you write should be supported by undisputed evidence.

Don't forget that one of the essential report preparation steps is conducting thorough research. Limit yourself to the information which is based on credible information. Only present relevant facts to the topic and add value to your thesis.

One of our report writing tips would be to write a rough draft and eliminate all the information not supported by reliable data. Double-check the credibility of the sources before finalizing the writing process.

Incorporate Bullet Points

When writing a research report, your goal is to make the information as consumable as possible. Don't shy away from using visual aids; this will only help you connect with a wider audience.

Bullet points are a great way to simplify the reading process and draw attention to the main concepts of the report. Use this technique in the body part of the report. If you notice that you are writing related information, use bullet points to point out their relation.

Incorporating bullet points and other visual aids in your report writing format will make a report easy to comprehend and use for further research.

While you are busy coming up with effective visual aids, you may not have enough time to take care of other assignments. Simply say, ' write my argumentative essay ,' and one of our expert writers will answer your prayer.

Review the Text for Accuracy and Inconsistencies

After completing report preparation and writing, ensure you don't skip the final stage. Even the greatest writers are not immune to grammatical mistakes and factual mix-ups.

Reviewing what you wrote is just as important as the research stage. Make sure there are no inconsistencies, and everything smoothly ties into the bigger scheme of events. Look out for spelling mistakes and word count.

If you want to further advance your writing skills, read our article about how to write a cover letter for essay .

Are You Looking for Help with Your Writing?

Our expert writers will provide top-notch assistance with any writing project

Annie Lambert

specializes in creating authoritative content on marketing, business, and finance, with a versatile ability to handle any essay type and dissertations. With a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a passion for social issues, her writing not only educates but also inspires action. On EssayPro blog, Annie delivers detailed guides and thought-provoking discussions on pressing economic and social topics. When not writing, she’s a guest speaker at various business seminars.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

How to Write a Business Report: A Step By Step Guide with Examples

Table of contents

Enjoy reading this blog post written by our experts or partners.

If you want to see what Databox can do for you, click here .

With so much experience under your belt, you already know a lot about business reporting.

So, we don’t want to waste your time pointing out the obvious because we know what you need.

Secrets. Tricks. Best practices.sales rep drilldown business report

The answer to how to write a mind-blowing business report that you don’t need to spend hours and days writing.

A business report that will immediately allow you to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

A report that’ll help you learn more about your business and do more accurate forecasting and planning for the future.

We believe we have just that right here.

With this comprehensive guide, you’ll create effective sales, analytical, and informative business reports (and business dashboards ) that will help you improve your strategies, achieve your goals, and grow your business.

So, let’s dive in.

What Is a Business Report?

Importance of creating business reports, types of business reports, what should be included in a business report, how to write a business report: an 11-step guide.

• Business Report Examples

Although there’s a variety of business reports that differ in many aspects, in short, a business report definition would be the following:

A business report is an informative document that contains important data such as facts, analyses, research findings, and statistics about a business with the goal to make this information accessible to people within a company.

Their main purpose is to facilitate the decision-making process related to the future of the business, as well as to maintain effective communication between people who create the reports and those they report to.

A good business report is concise and well-organized, looks professional, and displays the relevant data you can act on. The point is to reflect upon what you’ve achieved so far (typically, over the past month, quarter or year) and to use the data to create a new strategy or adjust the current one to reach even more business goals.

Business reports should be objective and based on the data. When stating the facts, people rely on numbers rather than giving descriptions. For instance, instead of saying “our conversion rate skyrocketed”, you would display the exact percentages that back up that claim.

Business reporting matters for several reasons, among which the most important ones are:

Recognizing Opportunities to Grow

Detecting issues and solving them quickly, evaluating a potential partner, having a paper trail, keeping things transparent for the stakeholders, setting new company goals.

In fact, over half of the companies that contributed to Databox’s state of business reporting research confirmed that regular monitoring and reporting brought them significant concrete benefits.

If you never look back at what you’ve achieved, you can’t figure out what you’ve done well and what you can leverage in the future for even better results.

When you analyze a specific aspect of your business over a specific time period and present the data you gathered in a report, you can detect an opportunity to grow more easily because you have all the information in one place and organized neatly.

Is it time to introduce new products or services? Is there a way to enhance your marketing strategy? Prepare a report. Can you optimize your finances? Write a financial business report . Whatever decision you need to make, it’s easier when you base it on a report.

Reports are essential for crisis management because they can introduce a sense of calmness into your team. Putting everything on paper makes it easier to encompass all the relevant information and when you know all the facts, you can make a more accurate and effective decision about what to do next.

Writing business reports regularly will also help you identify potential issues or risks and act timely to prevent damage and stop it from escalating. That’s why monthly reporting is better than doing it only once a year.

Having an insight into your finances , operations and other business aspects more regularly allows you to have better control over them and mitigate potential risks more effectively.

Different types of business reports may be accessible to the general public. And if they’re not, specific situations may require a company to send them over to the person requesting them. That may happen if you’re considering a partnership with another company. Before making the final decision, you should learn about their financial health as every partnership poses a certain risk for your finances and/or reputation. Will this decision be profitable?

Having an insight into a company’s business report helps you establish vital business relationships. And it goes the other way around – any potential partner can request that you pull a business report for them to see, so writing business reports can help you prove you’re a suitable business partner.

In business, and especially in large companies, it’s easy to misplace information when it’s communicated verbally. Having a written report about any aspect of your business doesn’t only prevent you from losing important data, but it also helps you keep records so you can return to them at any given moment and use them in the future.

That’s why it’s always good to have a paper trail of anything important you want to share with colleagues, managers, clients, or investors. Nowadays, of course, it doesn’t have to literally be a paper trail, since we keep the data in electronic form.

Writing business reports helps you keep things transparent for the stakeholders, which is the foundation of efficient communication between these two sides.

You typically need to report to different people – sometimes they’re your managers, sometimes they’re a client. But your company’s stakeholders will also require an insight into the performance of your business, and relying on reports will help you maintain favorable business relationships. A business report shows you clearly how your company is performing and there isn’t room for manipulation.

Once you set business goals and the KPIs that help you track your progress towards them, you should remember they’re not set in stone. From time to time, you’ll need to revisit your goals and critical metrics and determine whether they’re still relevant.

When you write a business report and go through it with your team members or managers, you have a chance to do just that and determine if you’re efficient in reaching your goals. Sometimes, new insights will come up while writing these reports and help you identify new objectives that may have emerged.

Depending on your goals and needs, you’ll be writing different types of business reports. Here are five basic types of business reports .

Informational Report

Analytical report, research report, explanatory report, progress report.

Informational reports provide you with strictly objective data without getting into the details, such as explaining why something happened or what the result may be – just pure facts.

An example of this type of business report is a statement where you describe a department within your company: the report contains the list of people working in this department, what their titles are, and what they’re responsible for.

Another example related to a company’s website could look like this Google Analytics website traffic engagement report . As we explained above, this report shows objective data without getting too much into the details, so in this case, just the most important website engagement metrics such as average session duration, bounce rate, sessions, sessions by channel, and so on. Overall, you can use this report to monitor your website traffic, see which keywords are most successful, or how many returning users you have, but without further, in-depth analysis.

Analytical reports help you understand the data you’ve collected and plan for the future based on these insights. You can’t make business decisions based on facts only, so analytical reports are crucial for the decision-making process.

This type of business report is commonly used for sales forecasting. For instance, if you write a report where you identify a drop or an increase in sales, you’ll want to find out why it happened. This HubSpot’s sales analytics report is a good example of what metrics should be included in such a report, like average revenue per new client or average time to close the deal. You can find more web analytics dashboard examples here.

From these business reports, you can find out if you will reach your goals by implementing your current strategy or if you need to make adjustments.

Research is critical when you’re about to introduce a change to your business. Whether it’s a new strategy or a new partner, you need an extensive report to have an overview of all important details. These reports usually analyze new target markets and competition, and contain a lot of statistical data.

While not the same, here is an example of an ecommerce dashboard that could help track each part of a campaign in detail, no matter whether you are launching a new product, testing a new strategy, and similar. Similar to a research report, it contains key data on your audience (target market), shows your top-selling products, conversion rate and more. If you are an online store owner who is using paid ads, you can rely on this report to monitor key online sales stats in line with Facebook Ads and Google Analytics. See more ecommerce dashboards here.

As you might guess from its name, you write the explanatory report when it’s necessary for you to explain a specific situation or a project you’ve done to your team members. It’s important to write this report in a way that everyone will be able to understand.

Explanatory reports include elements like research results, reasons and goals of the research, facts, methodology, and more. While not exactly an explanatory report, this example of a HubSpot marketing drilldown report is the closest thing to it, as it helps marketers drill into an individual landing page performance, and identify how good their best landing pages are at converting, or which ones have the best performance.

A progress report is actually an update for your manager or client – it informs them about where you stand at the moment and how things are going. It’s like a checkpoint on your way towards your goal.

These reports may be the least demanding to write since you don’t need to do comprehensive research before submitting them. You just need to sum up your progress up to the point when the report was requested. This business report may include your current results, the strategy you’re implementing, the obstacles you’ve come across, etc. If this is a marketing progress report you can use marketing report templates to provide a more comprehensive overview.

In many companies, progress reports are done on a weekly or even daily basis. Here is an example of a daily sales report from Databox. HubSpot users can rely on this sales rep drilldown business report to see how individual each sales rep is performing and measure performance against goals. Browse through all our KPI dashboards here.

What does a great business report look like? If you’re not sure what sections your report should have, you’ll learn what to include in the following lines.

Business Report Formatting

Different types of reports require different lengths and structures, so your business report format may depend on what elements your report needs to have. For example, progress reports are typically pretty simple, while analytical or explanatory reports are a different story.

However, most reports will start with a title and a table of contents, so the person reading the report knows what to expect. Then, add a summary and move on to the introduction. After you’ve written the body and the conclusion, don’t forget to include suggestions based on your findings that will help your team create an actionable plan as you move forward.

After that, list the references you used while creating the report, and attach any additional documents or images that can help the person reading the report understand it better.

This outline may vary depending on what kind of report you’re writing. Short business reports may not need a table of contents, and informative reports won’t contain any analyses. Also, less formal reports don’t need to follow a strict structure in every situation.

Business Report Contents

When it comes to the contents of your report, keep in mind the person who’s going to read it and try to balance between including all the relevant information, but not overwhelming the reader with too many details.

• The introduction to the report should state the reason why you’re writing it, and what its main goal is. Also, mention what methodology and reporting software you’ve used, if applicable.
• The body of the report is where you’ll expose all your key findings, explain your methodology, share the important data and statistics, and present your results and conclusion.
• The conclusion , similarly to the summary you’ll add at the beginning of the report, briefly singles out the most important points and findings of the report.

If you decide to include more sections like recommendations, this is where you’ll suggest the next steps your team or the company may want to take to improve the results or take advantage of them if they’re favorable.

PRO TIP: Are You Tracking the Right Metrics for Your SaaS Company?

As a SaaS business leader, there’s no shortage of metrics you could be monitoring, but the real question is, which metrics should you be paying most attention to? To monitor the health of your SaaS business, you want to identify any obstacles to growth and determine which elements of your growth strategy require improvements. To do that, you can track the following key metrics in a convenient dashboard with data from Profitwell:

• Recurring Revenue. See the portion of your company’s revenue that is expected to grow month-over-month.
• MRR overview. View the different contributions to and losses from MRR from different kinds of customer engagements.
• Customer overview . View the total number of clients your company has at any given point in time and the gains and losses from different customer transactions.
• Growth Overview . Summarize all of the different kinds of customer transactions and their impact on revenue growth.
• Churn overview. Measure the number and percentage of customers or subscribers you lost during a given time period.

If you want to track these in ProfitWell, you can do it easily by building a plug-and-play dashboard that takes your customer data from ProfitWell and automatically visualizes the right metrics to allow you to monitor your SaaS revenue performance at a glance.

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Profitwell account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Note : Other than text, make sure you include images, graphs, charts, and tables. These elements will make your report more readable and illustrate your points.

Whether you’re writing a specific type of business report for the first time or you simply want to improve the quality of your reports, make sure you follow this comprehensive guide to writing an effective business report.

• Do Your Research
• Create an Outline
• Determine Formatting Guidelines
• Think of an Engaging Title
• Write the Introduction
• Divide the Body of the Report into Sections
• Choose Illustrations
• Conclude Effectively
• Gather Additional Documentation
• Add a Summary
• Proofread Your Work

Step 1: Do Your Research

A well-planned report is a job half done. That means you need to do research before you start writing: you need to know who you’re writing for and how much they know about the topic of your report. You need to explore the best business dashboard software and templates you can use for your report.

Also, if you believe you will need additional resources and documents to add in the appendix, you should do it during this phase of report writing.

Step 2: Create an Outline

Once you’ve gathered the resources, it’s time to plan the report. Before you start writing, create an outline that will help you stick to the right structure. A business report is complex writing in which you can get lost very easily if you don’t have a clear plan.

Moreover, the report shouldn’t be complicated to read, so sticking to a plan will allow you to keep it concise and clear, without straying from the topic.

Step 3: Determine Formatting Guidelines

Most companies have their in-house formatting that every official document has to follow. If you’re not sure if such rules exist in your company, it’s time you checked with your managers.

If there arent’ any guidelines regarding formatting, make sure you set your own rules to make the report look professional. Choose a simple and readable format and make sure it supports all the symbols you may need to use in the report. Set up proper headings, spacing, and all the other elements you may need in Word or Google Docs.

Pro tip: Google Docs may be easier to share with people who are supposed to read your business report.

Step 4: Think of an Engaging Title

Even if you’re writing a formal business report, the title should be clear and engaging. Reports are typically considered dull as they’re a part of official business documentation, but there’s no reason why you can’t make them interesting to read. Your title should suit the report topic and be in different font size so the reader can recognize it’s a title. Underneath the title, you should add the name of the author of the report.

Step 5: Write the Introduction

A good introductory paragraph for a business report should explain to the reader why you’ve written the report. Use the introduction to provide a bit of background on the report’s topic and mention the past results if there’s been a significant improvement since your last report.

Step 6: Divide the Body of the Report into Sections

As this will be the most comprehensive part of your report, make sure you separate the data into logical sections. Your report is supposed to tell a story about your business, and these sections (such as methodology, hypothesis, survey, findings, and more) will help the data look well-organized and easy to read.

Step 7: Choose Illustrations

Of course, each of these sections should be followed with charts, graphs, tables, or other illustrations that help you make a point. Survey results are typically best displayed in pie charts and graphs, and these enable the reader to visualize the data better. From the formatting point of view, breaking the long text sections with illustrations makes the report more readable.

Pro tip: Using centralized dashboard solutions like Databox can bring your reporting game to the next level. Sign up for a forever-free trial now to see how you can use Databox to track and visualize performance easier than ever before .

Step 8: Conclude Effectively

Finish your report with a to-the-point conclusion that will highlight all the main data from the report. Make sure it’s not too long, as it’s supposed to be a summary of the body of the report. In case you don’t want to add a specific section for recommendations, this is where you can include them, along with your assessments.

Step 9: Gather Additional Documentation

If you’ve determined what additional documents, images, surveys, or other attachments you may need for your report, now is the time to collect them. Request access to those you may not be able to get on time, so you have everything you need by the deadline. Copy the documents you can use in the original form, and scan the documents you need in electronic format.

Step 10: Add a Summary

The summary is usually at the top of the report, but it’s actually something you should write after your report is completed. Only then will you know exactly what your most relevant information and findings are, so you can include them in this brief paragraph that summarizes your report’s main points.

The summary should tell the reader about the objective of the report, the methodology used, and even mention some of the key findings and conclusions.

Step 11: Proofread Your Work

It may seem like common sense, but this final step of the process is often overlooked. Proofreading your work is how you make sure your report will look professional because errors can ruin the overall impression the reader will form about your work, no matter how great the report is.

Look for any spelling or grammatical mistakes you can fix, and if you’re not sure about specific expressions or terminology, use Google to double-check it. Make sure your writing is to-the-point and clear, especially if you’re writing for people who may not know the industry so well. Also, double-check the facts and numbers you’ve included in the report before you send it out or start your reporting meeting.

Business Report Examples (with Ready-to-Use Templates)

Here, we’re sharing a few business reporting examples that you can copy, along with ready-to-use and free-to-download templates. If you don’t know where to start and what to include in different types of business reports, these business report examples are a great way to get started or at least get some inspiration to create yours.

Activity Report Example

Annual report example, project status report example, financial report example, sales report example, marketing report example.

Note : Each of the business report templates shared below can be customized to fit your individual needs with our DIY Dashboard Designer . No coding or design skills are necessary.

For reporting on sales activity, HubSpot users can rely this streamlined sales activity report that includes key sales metrics, such as calls, meetings, or emails logged by owner. This way, you can easily track the number of calls, meetings, and emails for each sales rep and identify potential leaks in your sales funnel. Check all our sales team activity dashboards here. Or if you are looking for dashboards that track general sales performance, browse through all Databox sales dashboards here.

If you’re preparing for annual reporting, you will benefit from choosing this HubSpot annual performance report . It contains all the relevant metrics, such as email and landing page performance, new contacts, top blog posts by page views, and more. See all our performance dashboard templates here.

Project status reports can be very similar to progress reports. If you’re in need of one of those, here’s an example of a Project overview dashboard from Harvest that shows that can help you create simple, but well-organized report based on metrics that matter: hours tracked, billable hours, billable amount split by team members., and more. Check out more project management dashboard templates we offer here.

Are you creating a financial report? You will find this QuickBooks + HubSpot integration a great choice for a financial performance dashboard that makes creating a report simple. This dashboard focuses on the essential financial report

ting metrics and answers all your revenue-related questions. See all Databox financial dashboards here.

If you’re tracking your sales team’s monthly performance, this sales report template will help you prepare an outstanding report. Check out all the vital productivity KPIs, track your progress towards your goals, and understand well how your current sales pipeline is performing. See all sales performance dashboards we have available here.

Marketing reports can be easily prepared by using this monthly marketing report template . With HubSpot’s reporting, you can determine where your website traffic is coming from, how your landing pages and specific blog posts are performing, and how successful your email campaigns are. Browse all Databox marketing dashboards or marketing report examples here.

Create a Professional Business Report in No Time with Databox

Does creating a business report still sound like a daunting task? It doesn’t have to be with Databox.

In times when we’re all trying to save our time and energy for things that matter rather than scattering valuable resources on tedious, repetitive tasks, it’s critical to optimize your business process. And we want to help you do just that.

Using a business reporting dashboard enables you to track data from all the different tools you’re using – but in one place. With Databox, you can monitor and report on performance in a single dashboard that is optimized for all your favorite devices and you can create streamlined and beautiful dashboards even if you are not that tech-savvy. (no coding or design skills are required).

Automating business reporting has never been easier. And with Databox, you can do exactly that in just a few clicks. Sign up now and get your first 3 business dashboards for free.

Do you want an All-in-One Analytics Platform?

Hey, we’re Databox. Our mission is to help businesses save time and grow faster. Click here to see our platform in action. 

• Databox Benchmarks
• Future Value Calculator
• ROI Calculator
• Return On Ads Calculator
• Percentage Growth Rate Calculator
• Report Automation
• Client Reporting
• What is a KPI?
• Google Sheets KPIs
• Sales Analysis Report
• Shopify Reports
• Data Analysis Report
• Google Sheets Dashboard
• Best Dashboard Examples
• Analysing Data
• Marketing Agency KPIs
• Automate Agency Google Ads Report
• Marketing Research Report
• Social Media Dashboard Examples
• Ecom Dashboard Examples

Does Your Performance Stack Up?

Are you maximizing your business potential? Stop guessing and start comparing with companies like yours.

A Message From Our CEO

At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.

Stefana Zarić is a freelance writer & content marketer. Other than writing for SaaS and fintech clients, she educates future writers who want to build a career in marketing. When not working, Stefana loves to read books, play with her kid, travel, and dance.

Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth

12 Tips for Developing a Successful Data Analytics Strategy

What Is Data Reporting and How to Create Data Reports for Your Business

What is kpi reporting kpi report examples, tips, and best practices.

Build your first dashboard in 5 minutes or less

Latest from our blog

• BTB: Building Purpose-Driven Marketing Strategies (w/ Andi Graham, Big Sea) May 24, 2024
• Banking on Future Growth: Predictions, Challenges, and Performance for Financial Brands May 23, 2024
• Metrics & KPIs
• vs. Tableau
• vs. Looker Studio
• vs. Klipfolio
• vs. Power BI
• vs. Whatagraph
• vs. AgencyAnalytics
• Product & Engineering
• Inside Databox
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Talent Resources
• We're Hiring!
• Help Center
• API Documentation

Report Writing Format, Tips, Samples and Examples

Pankaj dhiman.

• Created on December 11, 2023

How to Write a Report: A Complete Guide (Format, Tips, Common Mistakes, Samples and Examples of Report Writing)

Struggling to write clear, concise reports that impress? Fear not! This blog is your one-stop guide to mastering report writing . Learn the essential format, uncover impactful tips, avoid common pitfalls, and get inspired by real-world examples.

Whether you’re a student, professional, or simply seeking to communicate effectively, this blog empowers you to craft compelling reports that leave a lasting impression.

Must Read: Notice Writing: How to write, Format, Examples

What is Report Writing ?

Report Writing – Writing reports is an organized method of communicating ideas, analysis, and conclusions to a target audience for a predetermined goal. It entails the methodical presentation of information, statistics, and suggestions, frequently drawn from study or inquiry.

Its main goal is to inform, convince, or suggest actions, which makes it a crucial ability in a variety of professional domains.

A well-written report usually has a concise conclusion, a well-thought-out analysis, a clear introduction, a thorough methodology, and a presentation of the findings.

It doesn’t matter what format is used as long as information is delivered in a logical manner, supports decision-making, and fosters understanding among stakeholders.

Must Read : Article Writing Format, Objective, Common Mistakes, and Samples

Format of Report Writing 

• Title Page:
• Title of the report.
• Author’s name.
• Date of submission.
• Any relevant institutional affiliations.
• Abstract/Summary:
• A brief overview of the report’s key points.
• Summarizes the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions.
• Table of Contents:
• Lists all sections and subsections with corresponding page numbers.

Introduction:

• Provides background information on the subject.
• Clearly states the purpose and objectives of the report.
• Methodology:
• Details how the information was gathered or the experiment conducted.
• Includes any relevant procedures, tools, or techniques used.
• Findings/Results:
• Presents the main outcomes, data, or observations.
• Often includes visual aids such as charts, graphs, or tables.
• Discussion:
• Analyzes and interprets the results.
• Provides context and explanations for the findings.

Conclusion:

• Summarizes the key points.
• May include recommendations or implications.

Must Read: Directed Writing: Format, Benefits, Topics, Common Mistakes and Examples

Report Writing Examples – Solved Questions from previous papers

Example 1: historical event report.

Question : Write a report on the historical significance of the “ Battle of Willow Creek ” based on the research of Sarah Turner. Analyze the key events, outcomes, and the lasting impact on the region.

Solved Report:

Title: Historical Event Report – The “Battle of Willow Creek” by Sarah Turner

This report delves into the historical significance of the “Battle of Willow Creek” based on the research of Sarah Turner. Examining key events, outcomes, and the lasting impact on the region, it sheds light on a pivotal moment in our local history.

Sarah Turner’s extensive research on the “Battle of Willow Creek” provides a unique opportunity to explore a critical chapter in our local history. This report aims to unravel the intricacies of this historical event.

Key Events:

The Battle of Willow Creek unfolded on [date] between [opposing forces]. Sarah Turner’s research meticulously outlines the sequence of events leading to the conflict, including the political climate, disputes over resources, and the strategies employed by both sides.

Through Turner’s insights, we gain a nuanced understanding of the immediate outcomes of the battle, such as changes in territorial control and the impact on the local population. The report highlights the consequences that rippled through subsequent years.

Lasting Impact:

Sarah Turner’s research underscores the enduring impact of the Battle of Willow Creek on the region’s development, cultural identity, and socio-political landscape. The report examines how the event shaped the community we know today.

The “Battle of Willow Creek,” as explored by Sarah Turner, emerges as a significant historical event with far-reaching consequences. Understanding its intricacies enriches our appreciation of local history and its role in shaping our community.

Access the Learning Platform

Report writing Samples

 book review report.

Title: Book Review – “The Lost City” by Emily Rodriguez

“The Lost City” by Emily Rodriguez is an enthralling adventure novel that takes readers on a captivating journey through uncharted territories. The author weaves a tale of mystery, discovery, and self-realization that keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end.

Themes and Characters:

Rodriguez skillfully explores themes of resilience, friendship, and the pursuit of the unknown. The characters are well-developed, each contributing uniquely to the narrative. The protagonist’s transformation throughout the story adds depth to the overall theme of self-discovery.

Plot and Pacing:

The plot is intricately crafted, with twists and turns that maintain suspense and intrigue. Rodriguez’s ability to balance action scenes with moments of introspection contributes to the novel’s well-paced narrative.

Writing Style:

The author’s writing style is engaging and descriptive, allowing readers to vividly envision the settings and empathize with the characters. Dialogue flows naturally, enhancing the overall readability of the book.

“The Lost City” is a commendable work by Emily Rodriguez, showcasing her storytelling prowess and ability to create a captivating narrative. This novel is recommended for readers who enjoy adventure, mystery, and character-driven stories.

Must Read: What is Descriptive Writing? Learn how to write, Examples and Secret Tips

Report Writing Tips

Recognise your audience:

Take into account your target audience’s expectations and degree of knowledge. Adjust the content, tone, and language to the readers’ needs.

Precision and succinctness:

To communicate your point, use language that is simple and unambiguous. Steer clear of convoluted sentences or needless jargon that could confuse the reader.

Logical Structure:

Organize your report with a clear and logical structure, including sections like introduction, methodology, findings, discussion, and conclusion.

Use headings and subheadings to improve readability.

Introduction with Purpose:

Clearly state the purpose, objectives, and scope of the report in the introduction.

Provide context to help readers understand the importance of the information presented.

Methodology Details:

Clearly explain the methods or processes used to gather information.

Include details that would allow others to replicate the study or experiment.

Presentation of Findings:

Give a well-organized and structured presentation of your findings.

Employ graphics (tables, graphs, and charts) to support the text and improve comprehension.

Talk and Interpretation:

Examine the findings and talk about the ramifications.

Explain the significance of the results and how they relate to the main goal.

Brief Conclusion:

Recap the main ideas in the conclusion.

Indicate in detail any suggestions or actions that should be implemented in light of the results.

Explore the Access Platform

Common mistakes for Report Writing 

Insufficient defining:.

Error: Employing ambiguous or imprecise wording that could cause misunderstandings.

Impact: It’s possible that readers won’t grasp the content, which could cause misunderstandings and confusion.

Solution: Explain difficult concepts, use clear language, and express ideas clearly.

Inadequate Coordination:

Error: Not adhering to a coherent and systematic format for the report.

Impact: The report’s overall effectiveness may be lowered by readers finding it difficult to follow the information’s flow due to the report’s lack of structure.

Solution: Make sure the sections are arranged clearly and sequentially, each of which adds to the report’s overall coherence.

Inadequate Research:

Error: Conducting insufficient research or relying on incomplete data.

Impact: Inaccuracies in data or lack of comprehensive information can weaken the report’s credibility and reliability.

Solution: Thoroughly research the topic, use reliable sources, and gather comprehensive data to support your findings.

Inconsistent Formatting:

Error: Using inconsistent formatting for headings, fonts, or spacing throughout the report.

Impact: Inconsistent formatting can make the report look unprofessional and distract from the content.

Solution: Maintain a uniform format for headings, fonts, and spacing to enhance the visual appeal and professionalism of the report.

Unsubstantiated Conclusions:

Error: Drawing conclusions that are not adequately supported by the evidence or findings presented.

Impact: Unsubstantiated conclusions can undermine the report’s credibility and weaken the overall argument.

Solution: Ensure that your conclusions are directly derived from the results and are logically connected to your research objectives, providing sufficient evidence to support your claims.

To sum up, proficient report writing necessitates precision, organization, and clarity. Making impactful reports requires avoiding common errors like ambiguous wording, shoddy organization, inadequate research, inconsistent formatting, and conclusions that are not supported by evidence.

One can improve the caliber and legitimacy of their reports by following a logical format, carrying out extensive research, staying clear, and providing conclusions that are supported by evidence.

Aiming for linguistic accuracy and meticulousness guarantees that the desired meaning is communicated successfully, promoting a deeper comprehension of the topic among readers.

See author's posts

Recent Posts

• Beyond IGCSEs: Exploring Education Options in Singapore
• Advantages of Pursuing IGCSE in Singapore: A Closer Look
• 5 Reasons A-Level Private Candidacy in Singapore is Right for You
• Ace Your IGCSEs: A Comprehensive Guide for Exam Domination
• AI-Generated Mock Assessments to Ace Cambridge IGCSE Biology 🧪: 9 AI-Powered Tools
• Ace Edexcel IGCSE Exams: A Complete Guide
• IB MYP: Benefits, Syllabus, Challenges & Online Resources
• Homeschooling in Singapore for Private Candidates: An Ultimate Guide
• IGCSE Tuition for Private Candidates in Singapore: Expert Tuition Available
• Choosing The Best International School Curriculum For Your Child (Part 2)

Get Started

Learner guide

Tutor guide

Curriculums

IGCSE Tuition

PSLE Tuition

SIngapore O Level Tuition

Singapore A Level Tuition

SAT Tuition

Math Tuition

Additional Math Tuition

English Tuition

English Literature Tuition

Science Tuition

Physics Tuition

Chemistry Tuition

Biology Tuition

Economics Tuition

Business Studies Tuition

French Tuition

Spanish Tuition

Chinese Tuition

Computer Science Tuition

Geography Tuition

History Tuition

TOK Tuition

Privacy policy

22 Changi Business Park Central 2, #02-08, Singapore, 486032

All rights reserved

©2022 tutopiya

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

• Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

• Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

• Google Tag Manager
• Infographics
• Daily Infographics
• Popular Templates
• Accessibility
• Graphic Design
• Graphs and Charts
• Data Visualization
• Human Resources
• Beginner Guides

Blog Marketing 50+ Essential Business Report Examples with Templates

50+ Essential Business Report Examples with Templates

Written by: Sara McGuire May 29, 2023

Reports may not be the most exciting communication format. But they’re important.

To make smart decisions about budgeting, marketing strategies, product development and growth strategies, you can’t rely on gut feeling alone.

And if you’re trying to sway stakeholders, creating a report with a simple, elegant design and creative data visualizations is guaranteed to impress.

This guide will deliver the most essential business report templates you can edit with Venngage, plus design tips and best practices.

Top business report templates (click to jump ahead):

What is a business report?

• Annual reports
• Project status reports
• Budget reports
• Sales reports
• Marketing reports
• Case studies
• White papers
• How to create a business report in 6 steps
• What are the types of business reports
• Business report template FAQs

A business report is a document that delivers important information about a company’s performance, financial health, a particular project, or other aspects that influence its decision-making process. 

Business reports come in various formats, such as PowerPoint presentations and online dashboards, offering more than just traditional files and spreadsheets.

They are crucial for organizations as they provide vital details that guide decision-making for business owners and managers.

They act as GPS, highlighting essential aspects like customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and financial figures. Business reports serve different audiences and purposes, delivering information in a clear and engaging format for both internal and external stakeholders.

Want a quick rundown of some of the business report templates in this blog? Check out this video tutorial:

1. Annual Report Templates

An annual report is an all-encompassing document that allows you to reflect on your company’s past year, including:

• Your company’s mission statement
• Your company’s growth (financially, product-wise, culture-wise)
• Your statement of income and cash flow
• Your various business segments
• Information about the company’s directors and executive officers
• Information about your company’s stock and dividends
• Wins and success stories

A lot of that sounds pretty dry, doesn’t it?

There’s actually a lot to be excited about in that list. You’re talking about how your company has grown, your wins (and maybe a few losses), and what’s on the horizon for the coming year.

You can bring that story to life in your annual report design  and we have business report samples to inspire you.

This annual business report example uses a variety of charts and unique sections like “program highlights” to tell the agency’s story:

Think about how you can represent your company visually:

• Are there photos you can include of your business in action?
• What fonts and colors reflect your business’s personality?
• Are there icons you can use to illustrate certain concepts?

The below annual report design uses an energizing orange and yellow color scheme and cute icons. The format is highly visual and modern. All this reflects a dynamic company that’s optimistic about the future.

This company annual report template uses a mountain motif to reflect the company’s ambitious goals. Take a look at how the different sections of the report (“Strategy”, “Finance” and “Performance”) are color-coded to make the report easier to scan:

In the business report example below, the sleek, modern design with bold color accents reflects design trends in the games industry, which would appeal to stakeholders.

The same design ideas can be applied to an annual report presentation.

Take this annual report presentation for a coffee shop company. The whole design reflects the coziness of a coffee shop, from the softly filtered photos to the old-fashioned font:

A few annual report best practices:

• Create an eye-catching cover for your report
• Tell your company’s story in your annual report design by using thematic visuals, like background images and icons
• Pick a decorative font for headers and pair it with a more minimalist font for body text
• Look for opportunities to visualize data using infographics , charts and pictograms

Related : Our blog post with 55+ annual report templates , plus design tips and best practices.

2. Project Status Report Templates

Communication is central in any project. Consultants, agencies and freelancers especially want to be as transparent as possible. That is why a project status report template is one of the business report examples we are sharing in the article.

A project status report is crucial for communicating updates on what you’ve accomplished and what’s still pending. It also helps you flag any issues, either current or on the horizon. This helps build trust with the client.

The project status report template below communicates key information in an easy-to-understand format.

The above template lets you alert the client if the project is:

• Suffering from budget or scope creep
• On track in terms of schedule
• Healthy or not i.e. milestones completed on schedule, issues resolved

You can add bullet points on the second page to quickly flag key issues that are impacting project success.

Related : Our post on how to write a project management plan .

Simple Project Status Report Templates

Avoid ad-hoc emails or meetings. Use a simple project status report template to present your latest work and keep everyone on the same page, without endless back and forth.

The project status report below would work well for weekly updates.

This template lets you quickly provide an overview to busy stakeholders, who’ll be able to spot key project issues and progress  at a glance.

Project Status Report Template PPT

Big updates might require consultants to communicate the status of a project in person. The below presentation template uses charts and data visualization to get your key points across immediately.

Clients or other stakeholders can see what’s been accomplished and when, while the last slide leaves room for what’s still pending.

A few project status report best practices:

• Include a summary of all important tasks currently in progress. If you have a weekly meeting with the client, this section will probably serve as the jumping-off point for your conversation.
• Stakeholders should be able to tell at a glance if the project is way off schedule or there are too many unresolved issues.
• Document all outstanding problems and concerns. It’s important to have a record in case you run into issues with the client later on.

Related : Our post with 30+  project plan examples plus design tips.

3. Budget Report Templates

This is Business 101: on a quarterly or yearly basis, you should be analyzing your budget, expenses and revenue.

A budget report typically breaks down:

• The different categories of your budget
• The last year or quarter’s spending for each category of your budget
• Areas where you may need to cut or increase spending
• Forecasts for the coming year or quarter

Business Monthly Expenses Template

A full budget report is a bit too dense to pass around a room during a meeting.

But, a visually engaging presentation or one-page summary, like the business report example below, is perfect for keeping your team and stakeholders up to speed.

You can provide an overview of the last period’s spending by category, and highlight the amount you saved or exceeded the budget by.

For example, take a look at this summary budget report slide that uses a thematic background image to make it more engaging:

A quick summary page is also the perfect opportunity to creatively visualize data.

While tables are certainly efficient for comparing amounts spent, you could also use a more unusual visual like a bubble chart. This is because unique visuals make memorable business report examples.

Forecast Budget Template

A forecast is an essential business report that shows where a business is headed financially. It’s not a plan for the future, but rather its current short-term direction .

Use this forecast template to project your businesses’ revenue, and take appropriate action.

A few budget report best practices:

• Clearly label the period the report covers (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
• Provide a brief description of each section of your report, to highlight important insights
• Use a table to compare amounts of money saved vs. spent
• Use bar charts, pie charts and bubble charts to visualize budget allotment
• Highlight important insights using contrasting colors, bold fonts and icons

4. Sales Report Templates

If you aren’t tracking your sales on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis, it’s time to start.

Creating a sales report for different time periods can help you identify trends, as well as an opportunity for growth. Regularly reporting on your sales can also help your team stay focused on your goals.

What should be included in a sales report?

A sales report typically covers any of the following data:

• An overview of sales goals and whether or not those goals are being met
• Revenue and expenses
• Sales forecasts for the upcoming periods (month, quarter, year)
• Products and services that are selling the most and ones that are lagging
• Number of leads and conversion rates for a given period
• Any challenges or roadblocks

Weekly sales report template

Consider making  sales reporting  a segment of your weekly team meetings. You may want to provide a quick update for company-wide meetings and a more in-depth report for sales and marketing team meetings.

Here’s an example of what a quick weekly sales report could look like:

The slide simply covers the total sales for the week and compares them to previous weeks to highlight growth.

While this sales report presentation digs deeper into KPIs (key performance indicators) and conversions :

Monthly sales report template

For a monthly, quarterly or yearly sales report, you will probably want to go more in-depth into your metrics as you plan for upcoming periods.

That said, you don’t want to produce a 62-page text-heavy document no one will read. Surprise your client or boss with a fresh new way of doing things that are engaging and concise. You’ll differentiate yourself as an innovator.

For example, the following monthly sales report template uses a variety of charts and tables to keep the data fresh:

The below sales report template will help you visualize key sales metrics using pie charts, bar graphs and tables. The weighted text and icons help organize information in an easily digestible way.

Making your sales report easily accessible will help build your reputation as someone who’s transparent and trustworthy.

A few sales report best practices:

• Clearly identify the time period you are reporting on
• Use descriptive section headers and include descriptions for any charts or tables that need more clarification
• Provide context for readers, explain any major trends they should be aware of, any challenges your team encountered, and how the goals have been impacted
• Use line charts and bar graphs to show changes over time and highlight trends
• Emphasize key metrics in big, bold fonts (for example, the total sales for a given week)
• Use contrasting colors to emphasize keywords or one point on a graph

Related :  5 ways to host a more successful sales demo  by using images.

5. Digital Marketing Report Templates

If you’re a SaaS or e-commerce business, I don’t have to tell you how important digital marketing is. It’s the thing that can make or break many small businesses.

In order to scale and grow your business , it’s important to make informed, deliberate digital marketing decisions.

That means always looking for ways to improve your search rankings, grow your social media engagement, and optimize your ad campaigns.

A ‘ digital marketing report ‘ is a pretty broad term for a report that could be an overview of all your digital marketing channels or one particular channel.

A digital marketing report that covers all your main marketing channels  could include any (or all) of the following data:

• An overview of your current digital marketing strategy
• Your main marketing goals and whether or not they are being met
• An overview of your conversion metrics, including the number of leads, paid vs. organic leads, and your cost per conversion
• An overview of your traffic metrics, organized by channel
• An SEO overview , including any chhttps://growthbarseo.com/anges in rankings for target keywords
• An overview of PPC campaigns you’re running, including clickthrough rate, ROI and cost per click
• An overview of your social media channels, including engagement metrics and leads from specific channels

For example, take a look at this digital marketing report template that dedicates one page to each channel. Note how the company’s branding has also been incorporated into the design by using the brand’s colors and visuals that reflect the computer theme:

In a digital marketing report that focuses on one specific marketing channel, you will probably want to go more in-depth into each metric.

For example, in a social media report, you should cover:

• A comparison of your performance on specific social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (you could try visualizing it with a  comparison infographic )
• Specific engagement metrics like impressions, clicks, subscriber count, likes and comments
• An overview of your followers, including demographic information like age, gender and profession
• Conversion metrics from each specific social media channel

The below social media report visualizes some of these key metrics.

As a consultant, you may be gifted in social media marketing but totally flummoxed by all things design. Look better than you are by using the above template. It’ll help you present your findings in a way that’s effective and professional, while still managing to be playful and engaging.

If you’re concerned about organizing information by channel, here’s an example of a social media marketing report presentation that uses colored columns to make it easy to scan for a specific channel’s metrics:

A few digital marketing report best practices:

• Provide an overview of the performance of all your channels, or a particular channel
• Organize your report by channel (“Organic Search”, “Social Media”, “PPC”) or by specific campaigns/projects
• If your report is long enough, include a table of content to make it easier for readers to navigate your report
• Use bar charts and tables to compare your performance on different marketing channels
• Use icons to emphasize key information and visualize different channels (for example, different social media networks)
• Try to communicate your information concisely and focus on only one topic per page or slide

Related : Our post on what is a marketing plan and how to write and design one for maximum effectiveness.

6. Competitor Analysis Templates

Get the attention of marketers with a competitor analysis report. The best reports show exactly what a company must face off (and beat) to be successful.

A competitor analysis report usually has the following sections:

• Product summary
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Competitor strategies and objectives
• Outlook: is the market growing? Flat? Splintering into niche segments?

The following competitor analysis template neatly organizes these categories into compact sections and highlights important stats. Stakeholders can quickly compare them with their own company’s numbers and get an immediate sense of how they measure up.

Using a pre-designed competitor analysis template is also a great idea for consultants who want to set themselves apart from big consulting firms or boutiques. Visualizing data is a way to set yourself apart as numbers-focused, unique and innovative, as in this business report example.

A few competitor analysis report best practices:

• If you’re listing all competitors, add those entering the market in the next year as well as indirect competitors who sell to the same customers as yours.
• Find customer satisfaction surveys for competitors (usually carried out by trade press) and include their findings.
• Talk to the sales department to get a sense of the competitor’s customers.
• Do informal research on the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Talk to journalists who cover this specific industry. Don’t just rely on online information.

Related : Our post on how to create a competitor analysis report (with templates).

7. Case Study Templates

One of the business report examples on our list is the business case study. Though not a report exactly, a case study analyzes a particular aspect of a company or a situation it faced. A consultant may need to write one as part of a corporate training program they’re developing.

Case studies usually focus on one of these situations:

• Startup or early-stage venture
• Merger, joint venture, acquisition
• Market entry or expansion
• New project or product
• Pricing optimization
• Profitability
• Industry landscape
• Growth strategy

What makes case studies unique is how they tell a story. They include background information on the company, a protagonist or key players, the situation and outcomes.

The below case study template has plenty of space for this narrative while using icons and numbers to highlight key details.

Make sure to include a conclusion that contains your key findings. Why did the protagonist make the decisions she made? What were the outcomes? What can we learn from this? Circle back to the key question the case study raises and answer it.

Business case study template

Business case studies are usually teaching tools to show how real companies approached a particular scenario or problem. The case study usually reflects a business theory and demonstrates its real-life application.

For example, the following business case study template shows how a crafts retailer uses earned media to drive engagement-heavy traffic.

This is another version of the above case study. Notice the changes in branding in this business report example that sets it apart from the previous template.

Marketing case study template

Case studies are a powerful form of marketing as they show a potential customer how existing customers are already using your product or service to meet their goals.

For example, this social media marketing case study illustrates how Toy Crates used content marketing to radically increase their sales:

A few case study best practices:

• Outline any constraints and challenges the protagonist of the case study faced that affected her decision (such as a tight deadline).
• Attach supporting documentation, such as financial statements.
• Include an original title, such as “Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple.” The title should mention the company and the subject of the case study.

Related : Our post on how to write and design a case study .

8. Growth Strategy Templates

Setting goals for your business might seem easy in theory… but setting ambitious yet realistic goals can actually be quite challenging.

At Venngage, we follow these 5 steps to set our goals:

• Identifying and set high-level goals.
• Understand which inputs and outputs impact those goals.
• Run experiments to impact those inputs.
• Validate those experiments.
• Foster accountability for the results within the team.

For a more in-depth look at this process read our  growth strategy guide .

For example, if you’re a SaaS company, your high-level goals would probably be a specific number for revenue, a number of daily active users or employee count, like in the business report template below:

Once you’ve identified your high-level goals, the next step is to identify your OKRs (Objective Key Results), the metrics that impact your goals. Generally, you will probably want to break down your OKRs by channel.

So, if one of your goals is to hit a certain number of daily active users, your OKRs could be organized by:

• Acquisition OKRs, like organic traffic and paid traffic
• Conversion OKRs, like conversion rate
• Retention OKRs, like retention rate

Once you’ve identified your OKRs, you can come up with experiments to run that will impact those OKRs.

At Venngage, we use a weekly sprint to plan, execute and analyze our growth experiments. But I know other companies that use longer sprints, like two-week or month-long sprints.

Before you run an experiment, you should validate that it’s an experiment worth running. You can do that by identifying which goal it impacts, what resources the experiment will require, and how much effort you anticipate it will take to run the experiment.

This is the exact marketing sprint validator template that our marketing team uses when we schedule growth experiments:

After you’ve run a growth experiment, it’s extremely important to track your results.

At the end of every sprint, take a good chunk of time to analyze your experiments to see what learnings you can take from them. Then, classify an experiment as a “Winner” or “Loser” based on whether or not the results lined up with your hypothesis.

You can use your results from the sprint that just ended to inform your experiments in the upcoming print.

Here’s an example of a sprint release and results template that you could use. Note how each experiment is owned by a team member to foster accountability for the process and results:

A few growth strategy report best practices:

• Divide your growth strategy reports into color-coded columns based on goals, OKRs, or stages in a sprint
• Use icons like checkmarks and x’s to identify winning experiments and losing experiments
• Include brief descriptions on each template, to make it easy to understand
• Attribute each growth experiment to a team member, to foster accountability for the process and results
• Use your company colors, fonts and logo to maintain consistent branding across all of your communications

Related : Our complete guide to developing a growth strategy checklist.

9. Market Research Report Templates

Even after you’ve launched your business, it’s a good idea to do regular market research. You can use your research to plan and refine your marketing strategies, to identify new prospective customers and product plan.

Market research generally involves gathering information about the needs, problems and wants of your customers. This research can help you come up with your customer personas and specific problems you want to solve with your product or service.

You can conduct market research in two ways:

• Qualitative research (calls, focus groups)
• Survey research

For example, many consultants struggle to get buy-in from various stakeholders. The boss may be constantly changing the scope of the project based on a whim, such as the latest article he’s scoured from the internet! Employees may be set in their ways and resistant to incorporate consultants into their workflow.

One way to get clients on board and build trust is to provide stats and research that support your recommendations.

Here’s a market research business report example that lays out the industry landscape and gives clear guidance on the way forward, all backed up by facts.

This cheerful, icon-heavy market research report should help energize reluctant stakeholders. Packaging new (and sometimes daunting) information in fresh ways can help break through resistance.

You may also want to look at competitor statistics and industry trends. This template includes a competitor case study, including website analytics, and a SWOT analysis :

When it comes to creating your market research report, you may want to do an in-depth overview of all of your market research. Or you may want to focus on one area of your research, such as your survey results.

Survey Report Template

This survey report template helps visualize your findings; the pictogram and chart make the findings easy to understand.

The one-slide market research report identifies the demographics of the survey participants. The report categorizes participants by their jobs, locations, and the topics that they find most engaging. Note how each persona is visualized using an icon:

This business report example highlights how you can give your team and stakeholders a quick overview of your main market and what topics they’re interested in.

One of the purposes of a market research report is to present any conclusions that you came to after analyzing the data.

These could be conclusions about who your target customers are, areas where you can expand your business, and customer needs that aren’t currently being met. The below business report example visualizes this data and also provides space to draw your own conclusions.

Here’s an example of a market research report template that emphasizes key findings in the larger text before providing supporting data:

A few market research report best practices:

• Use icons to illustrate your customer personas
• Use charts and graphs to compare demographic information like customer age, gender, location, and occupations
• Include the main conclusions you came from after analyzing your data
• If your market research report is long enough, include a table of contents
• Include a brief summary of your data collection methods , including the sample size

10. White Paper Templates

White papers are great tools to educate and persuade stakeholders. Consultants can also use them to improve their reputation vis-a-vis big consulting firms and boutique firms or use them as lead magnets  in Facebook ads etc.

As always, a polished design is much more likely to engage senior leaders or potential clients.

A business report template or consulting report template is the fastest way to produce something that’s both attractive and easy to understand.

The below consulting report example has a full page dedicated to visuals. It’s the perfect way to break up the text and let it breathe. It also reinforces the information.

Browse our library of thousands of professional, free stock photos to swap in images that suit your topic best. Or upload your own.

Our editor makes it simple to adapt any of our business and consulting report templates to your needs. Change the text, fonts, photos, icons, colors, anything you want.

The next business report template is perfect for marketers and marketing consultants. It has an inviting and fun (but still professional) cover page that quickly communicates the content marketing process using icons.

Venngage has an extensive library of thousands of custom, modern and diverse icons you can swap into the above consulting report example. For instance, you could add the Twitter or Facebook logo or a “thumbs up” icon.

Then, click on the template’s chart or graph (pages four and five) to add your own data.

Struggling with organizing information in your reports?  It’s important for consultants and marketers to find a way to communicate key takeaways, and not overwhelm your reader with data.

The below consulting report template uses filled text boxes and icons on the third page to highlight top findings.

Different-colored headers also help create a hierarchy of information and add more variety to the design.

A few white paper best practices:

• Create an eye-catching white paper cover page using a background in bold color, photos or icons.
• Add a key takeaways section, with a header and bullet points.
• Visualize data using charts and pictograms in order to highlight key data.
• Incorporate your branding into your white paper template (brand colors and logo).

Related : Our blog post with 20+  white paper examples  for even more templates and design tips.

11. Project Plan Templates

A project plan is the best way to keep a project on track.

But, showcasing the steps towards completing a project and showing how each step is actionable and measurable can be tough. 

This is especially difficult if you’re a consultant and you don’t have company templates to rely on.

The below  project plan template is a simple way to visualize what needs to happen, and when.

The above highly organized project plan template uses bar graphs, icons and color-coding to present information in an accessible way. Once you enter the editor, click on the bar graph to customize the schedule.

The project timeline below also uses icons and color-coding to organize information, though in a slightly different way.

Projects suffer when there’s confusion about deadlines and what’s required at each step. This timeline from a business report sample makes it crystal clear what tasks belong to what step and how long each step should take.

A timeline is a perfect way for your team or client to refer back to the project schedule without having to read through tons of text.

You can also revise your timeline as the project progresses to reflect changes in the schedule.

The below consulting report template has a more traditional format for a project plan. Still, like the timelines, this business report sample relies heavily on visuals to create an easily scannable and understandable project overview.

Scope creep is the enemy of any project’s success (and the bane of many consultant’s existence). That’s why it’s so important to define the project from the very beginning. The consulting report template above has a section to do just that.

Of course, projects change and evolve. The project report below will help you raise any issues as soon as they happen and present solutions. That way, stakeholders can make a decision before the project schedule is seriously derailed.

Check out our blog post with  15+ project plan templates  for even more examples and design tips.

A few project plan best practices:

• Plot your project schedule visually using a timeline.
• Use color to categorize tasks and milestones.
• Use icons to illustrate steps in a process.
• Insert charts to track the duration of each phase of a project.
• Pick a flexible template that you can update as the project progresses and things change.

Related : Our post on the four phases of the project life cycle .

12. Business Proposal Templates

A business proposal  is a document that presents your product or service as the solution to a client’s problem. The goal of a business proposal is to persuade a prospective client to buy your product or service. These proposals can be either solicited or unsolicited.

The contents of a business proposal report will vary depending on the problem. 

Typically, a business proposal will include these sections:

• Information about your company (mission, qualifications, competitive edge)
• A detailed description of your client’s problem 
• The cost of your product/service 
• The methodology of how you propose to solve the client’s problem
• A timeline of your approach to solving the problem

A few business report examples and design tips:

Create an engaging title page for your business proposal. Think of it as the cover of a book or a movie poster. This will be your prospective client’s first impression of your business.

Use a design that tells a story about your company’s mission and the people you serve. For example, the cover for this business proposal template shows a happy team working together:

Meanwhile, this simple business proposal example uses icons to illustrate what the company does. The motif is carried throughout the rest of the proposal design:

Use visuals to highlight the emotion behind the problem

Businesses are made up of people, and people are emotionally charged. When identifying the problem, use imagery to highlight the frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction behind the problem. This will show empathy towards the people you’re proposing your solution to.

This business report sample page from a business proposal contrasts one image to illustrate the “problem” with a more cheerful image for the “solution”:

This marketing business proposal uses a variety of visuals like icons, bold typography and photos to tell a story:

Related : Our post on  consulting proposal templates or our guide to creating a business proposal .

How to create a business report in 6 steps?

Creating a business report can seem daunting, especially if you’ve never done it before. don’t let the word “business” intimidate you – these steps can be used for writing a report in any field!

Step 1: Define the purpose and scope of your report

Know the purpose of your report. Are you aiming to share the results of a project? Analyze performance? Recommend specific actions? Whatever the goal, keep it in mind as you go through the process. Also, consider the scope of your report. Decide what information you’ll be including, as well as what you can leave out.

Example: Let’s say your boss wants a report on your team’s sales performance during the last quarter. Your purpose might be to analyze the numbers and identify trends, areas for improvement, or opportunities for growth.

Step 2: Gather relevant data and information

Now that you know what you’re aiming for, it’s time to gather the information you’ll need. This might involve pulling data from internal systems, interviewing colleagues, or even conducting your research. Remember, the quality of your report depends on the accuracy and relevance of the information you provide, so double-check your sources and make sure you’ve got everything you need.

Example: For our sales performance report, you’ll need to collect data on product sales, individual and team performance, and any factors that may have influenced sales during the quarter.

Step 3: Organize your content

Next up is organizing all that information into a logical and easy-to-follow structure. This will depend on the specific requirements of your report, but some common components are an introduction, executive summary, main body, conclusion, and recommendations. A clear and logical structure helps readers easily understand and follow your report.

Example: In a sales performance report, you might start with an executive summary highlighting sales growth (or declines), outline individual team member’s performance, and then delve into a more detailed analysis of factors and trends.

Step 4: Write the report

When writing your report, start by developing a clear and concise writing style, avoiding jargon and buzzwords. Keep your audience in mind – make sure your report is easily digestible for your intended readers.

Example: When writing about sales performance, share facts and figures in simple terms that everyone can understand. Instead of saying, “Our sales team demonstrated a 12.3% compound annual growth rate,” say, “Our sales team increased their sales by 12.3% each year.”

Step 5: Add visual aids

To make your report more engaging and easier to understand, consider adding visual aids like graphs, charts, or images. These can help break up large blocks of text and highlight key findings or trends.

Example: For your sales performance report, you might create a bar chart showing sales growth over time or a pie chart displaying individual team members’ contributions.

Step 6: Review and refine

Last but not least, review your report. Does it achieve the purpose you set at the beginning? Are there any gaps in the information? Are there areas that could be clearer or more concise? Address any issues you find and refine your report until it meets your goals and is easy to understand for your target audience.

Example: In your sales performance report, if you find that you haven’t adequately explored the impact of a new product launch on sales, go back and add that analysis to provide a more comprehensive view.

What are the types of business reports?

Different types of business reports cater to various purposes, including monitoring performance, making decisions, and more, offering a range of options beyond standard reports.

1. Informational reports

The primary purpose of informational reports is, well, to inform. These reports provide all the nitty-gritty details of specific aspects of your business without any conclusions or opinions. 

Examples include daily sales reports, inventory levels, or even project updates. This is the essential “just the facts, ma’am” type of report you need to stay in the loop.

2. Analytical reports

Analytical reports give you a more in-depth look at the data to help you make decisions. These reports come with all the bells and whistles – charts, graphs, and recommendations based on thorough analysis. Analytical reports are what you whip out when you need to decide whether to invest in a new project, evaluate your marketing efforts, or diagnose challenges within the company. The goal of such a report is to help you make smarter decisions for the growth and development of your business.

3. Summaries & reviews:

If you’re a little short on time and need a quick overview of your business’s performance, summary reports are your best bet. These reports condense the crucial details from other reports at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly, or annually) and present them in a digestible format. 

4. Research reports

As the name suggests, these in-depth reports dig into specific topics or issues relevant to your business. Research reports are great when exploring new markets, considering new product development, or requiring a detailed evaluation of business practices. These reports act as guides for making major decisions that could significantly impact your company’s direction and success.

5. Progress reports

Let’s say you’ve got a fantastic project idea underway. You’ll need to keep track of every stage of it to ensure it’s smooth sailing ahead. Enter progress reports. They track the achievements, setbacks, and future plans of ongoing projects. These are essential for keeping everyone – from employees to investors – in the loop.

Business report template FAQs

1. what are the best practices for creating a business report.

You could open up Google doc, record your metrics and make a few points of analysis, send it to your team and call it a day. But is that the most effective way to report on your findings?

Many people may not even read those types of reports. Not to mention, a plain old report probably won’t impress stakeholders.

It’s important to brand yourself (and stand out from your competition). And then there’s the ever-important need to create buy-in from stakeholders and convince them of your recommendations.

That’s why it pays to make your reports as engaging as possible. That means visualizing data , processes , and concepts to make them easier to understand and more fun to look at, as you’ve seen from the business report examples in this post.

You can do that easily by getting started with a  business report template  or consulting report template .

There are two big reasons why it’s a good idea to create a highly visual business report:

• You will be able to organize, analyze and summarize your findings .
• You will be able to communicate your reports more effectively with your team, stakeholders and customers.

For example, the below business report template shows four different ways you can visualize information. It’s much more captivating and easily digested than a block of text.

And don’t worry about how time-consuming designing a report might be. If you start with a solid business report template, you can repurpose that template over and over again.

Use the template as a framework, then customize your information and design to fit your specific needs. Then, use a  chart tool  to convert cumbersome data into clear visuals.

Just like in the above business report sample, you’ll have a succinct, powerful (and polished) report that stakeholders can understand at a glance.

2. How do you design a business report template?

Incorporate your branding into the design

Part of building a strong brand is using consistent branding across all of your content, both internal and public-facing. You can incorporate your branding into your business report design by importing your logo and using your brand colors and fonts.

Our My Brand Kit feature automatically imports company logos and fonts from any website. You can then apply them to your design with one click.

Stick to only one topic per page or slide

When creating a report, it’s easy to try and cram a bunch of text onto one page. But then you run the risk of creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Instead, focus on only one topic per page or slide. If you find that even that makes your page look too cramped, then try breaking up your information into two pages or looking for ways to better summarize your information .

Put functionality first

When you’re designing a business report, you should look for opportunities to visualize data and creatively present information. That being said, the primary goal of your business report should still be to communicate information clearly.

Use design elements such as icons or fonts  in different sizes, weights and colors to highlight, emphasize and categorize information, not obscure it. If a page you’re working on looks cluttered or confusing, take another stab at it.

Remember that functionality comes first, and that includes using the right visuals for your information.

3. What is the best business report maker?

You can make a business report online using a number of tools. As we have mentioned, a great business report is visually appealing, includes icons, images, clear fonts, easy-to-understand charts and graphs, as well as being branded.

Venngage is the one-stop design solution when it comes to creating reports. The business report examples in this article highlight how easy it is to design a variety of reports for every type of organization and activity. Make design simple by using Venngage.

More business communication guides:

• The Ultimate Guide to Consulting Proposals (2024)
• 20+ White Paper Examples [Design Guide + White Paper Templates]

Discover popular designs

Infographic maker

Brochure maker

White paper online

Newsletter creator

Flyer maker

Timeline maker

Letterhead maker

Mind map maker

Ebook maker

Filter by Keywords

Project Management

How to write a project report (with steps & templates).

March 21, 2024

Juggling all the different components of a project can be quite a challenge. If that weren’t enough, you also have to write a project status report to update key stakeholders on the project’s progress. The struggle is real.

So where do you start? Fortunately, we have the answer. And that’s precisely why we put together this guide—to walk you through the process so you have a clear path from start to finish.

Learn more about creating project reports and different types of project status reports. Plus, you’ll walk away with five free project report templates, carefully crafted to streamline your project management workflow, save you time, and impress your stakeholders. 🤩

What is a Project Report?

How to write a project report, 1. project status report, 2. project progress report, 3. project cost benefit analysis report, 4. project time tracking report, 5. project resource report, 6. project risk report, 7. project variance report, 8. project performance report, 9. project completion report, why is project reporting important, 1. final project report template, 2. project status report template, 3. digital marketing report template, 4. employee daily activity report template, 5. campaign report template, create professional project reports in less time with clickup.

A project report is a document offering a comprehensive overview of a project’s objectives, progress, team performance, and milestone accomplishments. It also gives an account of the challenges faced during a project’s execution , solutions devised to tackle them, and the lessons learned during the process. 

Project managers create these reports to communicate with other project stakeholders—including team members, sponsors, clients, and other interested parties—to ensure everyone’s on the same page. The document also serves as a foundation for further evaluation and analysis to ensure the project says on track and achieves its goals. 🎯

Creating a project report doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Follow these three simple steps to create your first project report with ease.

Understand the purpose of the report

Before you create a project report, you need to understand the purpose of the report (the “why”) and know your target audience (the “who”). This will guide the content, structure, and tone of your project report.

Gather and organize the relevant information

At this point, you need to gather project information relevant to your project report. Make sure your data is accurate, reliable, and up-to-date. Organize the gathered information in a logical and structured manner.

• Executive summary : As its name suggests, this project summary gives readers a quick overview of the whole report. It’s a snapshot that highlights the most important parts of the project. While it’s placed at the start of the report, it’s often written last. It covers the project’s objectives, methodology, major outcomes, and conclusions. 
• Introduction: This sets the context and expectations of the entire report. It includes the project’s purpose and scope, project schedule, the problems it aims to address, and the methodologies to get there. It also outlines the structure and organization of the rest of the report. 
• Body: Typically, this is the longest part of project management reports because it dives into in-depth details, including project progress, data collection, analysis reports, constraints, and limitations. Remember that whatever you include here should reflect the purpose of your project report and the preferences of your target audience. 
• Conclusions & Recommendations: Based on your findings and analysis, identify opportunities for improvement, suggest strategies for addressing them, or propose avenues for future research. 

Format and proofread the report

Ensure that your project report follows a consistent formatting style—headings, subheadings, and bullet points will make it easier to read. In addition, scan your report for spelling or grammar errors and typos.

Types of Project Reports

Project reports come in diverse formats, with each serving different use cases. Here are nine of the most commonly used types of project reports.

A project status report is a document that gives a snapshot of where your project stands at any given moment. It’s like answering the question, “How’s the project doing?”

But instead of just saying “The project is fine,” you actually dive into the project goals, tasks completed, milestones achieved, challenges faced, lessons learned, potential roadblocks, and next steps. 

Whether it’s a weekly project status report or a monthly status report, this documentation eliminates the need for status meetings while giving stakeholders the most recent status of the project.

A project progress report is slightly similar to a status update report, as they both discuss task progress. However, the progress report is more quantitative and zooms in on individual tasks and project milestones . 

It’s like taking a magnifying glass and examining the progress of each task, one by one. For example, it could include in-depth information on the percentage of completion and current status of each task (completed, on track, delayed, etc.). 

The cost-benefit analysis report is usually prepared before a project is put into motion. Of the various project reports, this one aims to answer a simple question: “Is it worth pursuing this project?”

To answer this question, the report first assesses all project costs like operational expenses, materials, salaries, equipment, and potential risks. 

It then considers the projected benefits, such as increased profit margins, cost savings, improved efficiency, or happier customers. Finally, the report compares the costs to the benefits to determine if it’s time to move forward or explore other options.

A project time-tracking report is a document that records and summarizes time spent on project activities. Each project team member contributes to writing this report—they track and record the amount of time they’ve spent on tasks and submit it to the project manager. ⏰

Thankfully, the rise of project management tools has eliminated the need for paper-based time-tracking submissions. They make it easy for team members to submit accurate and detailed time reports to the project manager—while reducing the administrative burden of manual report compilation. 

Project managers can see how time is spent and the overall productivity of team members. As a result, they’re able to make informed decisions, such as redistributing workload (aka workload management ), reassigning tasks, and providing feedback and support to team members. 

A project resource dashboard offers a bird’s-eye view of how resources (e.g., labor, equipment, materials, budget, etc.) are allocated in a project. Think of it as a comprehensive resource inventory, listing every project task, the responsible party, and the resources being used. 

Project reports like this help project managers keep track of resource availability, identify potential resource constraints or shortages, and make informed decisions about resource allocation and optimization.

A project risk report offers a comprehensive analysis of potential risks, their likelihood of occurrence, their potential impact on the project, and recommended mitigation strategies. 

Rather than waiting for future events to derail the project, project reports like this one allow project managers to take a more proactive approach to risk management—thereby boosting the chances of overall project success.

A project variance report reveals the gaps or deviations between project plans and the actual performance or results achieved. It compares various factors—like budget, time, resources, and scope—and their planned values with their actual values, then computes the differences (or variances). 

By analyzing these variances, project managers and stakeholders can discuss the possible reasons behind them, identify areas that need attention, and take corrective actions where necessary.

A project performance report evaluates the overall performance and achievements of a project against predetermined metrics and objectives. It includes information on project deliverables, key performance indicators (KPIs) , and stakeholder satisfaction.

This report helps project managers assess project success, identify areas for improvement, and communicate the project’s performance to stakeholders.

A project completion report marks the end of a project journey. It summarizes the entire project lifecycle, from initiation to closure. This report contains an overview of the project’s objectives, deliverables, milestones, challenges, and recommendations for future projects.

Writing project reports may initially seem redundant and time-consuming. However, it plays a crucial role in achieving project success. While a few benefits were hinted at earlier, let’s get a better picture of why project reports should not be overlooked.

More clarity

Creating a project report allows you to step back and reflect on the project’s progress. As you record the milestones, successes, and challenges, a wealth of insights begin to unfold—strengths, weaknesses, and areas that need attention.

This holistic view of the project’s health helps you steer it toward the desired outcomes and ensure it stays on track.

Encourages evaluation and analysis

Project reports allow you to evaluate and analyze the different aspects of a project in a systematic way—gathering relevant data, analyzing them, and evaluating their significance. By giving your project a critical analysis, you can uncover valuable insights, identify patterns, draw meaningful conclusions, and take strategic action. 🛠️

Enhances communication and collaboration

Creating a project report challenges you to present the project’s progress and results to stakeholders in a clear and coherent manner. A well-written report promotes project transparency and ensures everyone is on the same page.

It also facilitates collaboration by providing a common reference point for discussions, feedback, and decision-making.

Boosts professionalism and credibility

When you present a comprehensive and well-structured report, it shows that you have conducted thorough research, followed a methodical approach, and can effectively communicate complex information. This, in turn, boosts your reputation, enhances your credibility, and showcases your expertise among peers, colleagues, and potential employers.

Knowledge preservation

A project report serves as a valuable reference for future research or projects. By documenting your process, methodologies, challenges, lessons, and results, you create a resource that can be consulted and built upon by others.

This contributes to the cumulative knowledge in your field and fosters a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Improves Team Alignment

Project reports are instrumental in enhancing team alignment. They provide a clear, concise snapshot of progress, identifying accomplishments, challenges, and next steps. This enables all team members to understand the project’s current status and their respective roles in achieving the overall objectives.

Check out these project report templates for teams:

• Nonprofit Organizations Project Report
• Operations Teams Project Report
• Finance Teams Project Report
• DevOps Teams Project Report
• Agile Teams Project Report
• Sales Teams Project Report

5 Project Report Examples & Templates

Sure, you could write project reports from scratch and spend countless hours formatting and structuring them. But why would you when you can use free project report templates? They provide a structure and format for your report so you can simply plug in your data and customize the design to fit your needs. Not only do project report templates speed up the report creation process, but they also enhance the overall quality of your reports. 

Let’s jump right in to explore our top five project report templates. 📈

A final project report is the perfect finishing touch to conclude a project and highlight its achievements. ClickUp’s Final Project Report Template provides a solid structure to help you put it together with the following key sections:

• Planned vs. Actual: A quantitative breakdown of how the project deviated from the original plan with regard to its start date, completion date, duration, and budget
• Management Effectiveness: A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis evaluating how the project was managed
• Project Learnings : Share the important project lessons learned by the team throughout the lifespan of the project
• Contract Terms Checklist : A simple table listing the various contract terms, whether they were completed, and any remarks you have 
• Overall Performance rating: A 1 out of 5 rating of the different aspects of the project, from planning and execution to leadership and communication

This template is built in ClickUp Docs , which means you have unlimited flexibility for customization—add extra sections and tweak the appearance to suit your taste. And guess what? The table of content updates in real-time as you add, edit, or delete multiple headers.

If you want to wow your team and clients, this project status report template will help you get the job done. 

Writing a project status report is fairly straightforward. But staring at a blank document and worrying about crafting perfectly manicured sentences can make this process last a lot longer than it should. 

Thankfully, ClickUp’s Project Status Report Template is here to save the day! Built inside ClickUp Whiteboards, this template provides a hassle-free method to quickly capture key project details in a visually engaging way.

• General information: Cover general project details (e.g., project name, objectives, project timeline , reporting period, etc.) which you’ll need to fill in only once
• Progress details: Use color-coding to share in-progress, at-risk, delayed, and completed tasks
• Support and resources: List out assets (e.g., labor, money, etc.) needed for a smooth operation 
• Highlights and takeaways: Share key lessons learned and other noteworthy highlights
• What went well/What needs improvement: Use this opportunity to reflect on the project’s progress and share the areas that performed well and what needs attention
• Next steps: Highlight the key action items that need to get done to keep the project on track

Enter the details under each of these sections onto sticky notes, which’ll help you quickly pour down your thoughts without worrying about writing perfect sentences. It’s also very helpful for stakeholders as the information on sticky notes is short and straight to the point. 

This template removes the pressure of creating a status report and saves valuable time—all while keeping key stakeholders informed and up to date.

After running a digital marketing campaign project, you need to gather key metrics from the campaign and present it to key stakeholders for evaluation, performance analysis, and notes for future improvements. 

Sharing this info across multiple digital channels can get overwhelming but there’s no need to worry. ClickUp’s Digital Marketing Report Template has you covered with everything you need. Plus, it’s neatly broken down into the following sections:

• Digital Marketing Performance: This section lets you summarize the overall performance of your campaign by capturing key details like project budget allocations, actual expenses, cost per acquisition, total impressions, and total clicks across multiple campaigns
• Web Analytics Report: This section analyzes website performance during and after the project’s completion. It captures metrics like page views, bounce rate, traffic sources, and overall conversion rate
• Social Media Campaign Performance: This section analyzes social media performance by measuring metrics like impressions, followers, and engagement rate—all in a simple table for each social media platform 

Use this template to present the performance of your digital marketing project in a simple and visually engaging way. This makes it easy to identify trends, analyze the impact of your campaign, and make informed decisions regarding future marketing initiatives.

A key way to stay on track and guarantee overall project success is to engage team members in the process.

The Employee Daily Activity Report Template by ClickUp has a simple tabular layout that makes it easy for team members to record and keep track of: 

• Completed tasks and the time spent on each
• Ongoing tasks and their due dates
• Upcoming tasks and any support they’ll need

This template encourages each team member to get work done and ask for support when needed—while allowing you to keep the project on track by providing support and maximizing team performance.

Remember the Digital Marketing Report Template we looked at earlier? You can choose to further analyze the marketing performance section, with elements from this Campaign Report Template by ClickUp . 

Dive deeper into how each marketing channel contributed to overall ad cost, ad revenue, and ad conversion rate. You can further break down each channel’s performance by analyzing the metrics from each individual campaign on that channel.

There you have it—your secret sauce for creating an effective project report in a fraction of the time. And that’s only scratching the surface … working inside ClickUp unlocks a lot more perks. 

Not only does ClickUp make project reporting easy and quick, but it also gives you access to free project management templates to enhance your workflow. Quickly assign tasks to your team, keep track of progress, discuss updates, and collaborate on documents and whiteboards—all in one place. ✨

Did we mention the integrations? ClickUp plays nicely with other apps, allowing you to seamlessly connect your favorite tools to supercharge your team’s productivity. And let’s not forget about the time you’ll save using ClickUp’s automations—a feature that lets you breeze through repetitive tasks that used to eat up valuable time across project management reports.

Just imagine what you can do with those extra hours—maybe enjoy a cup of coffee or catch up with your team about how best you can support them. Make project reporting a blast with ClickUp and boost your chances of a successful project. 

Get started by signing up for free on ClickUp today … Ready? Set? Report!

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

Receive the latest WriteClick Newsletter updates.

Thanks for subscribing to our blog!

Please enter a valid email

• Free training & 24-hour support
• Serious about security & privacy
• 99.99% uptime the last 12 months

Marketing Reporting Examples: How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports

Run marketing reports that better inform your decisions, bolster your marketing resources, and help your organization grow better.

MONTHLY MARKETING REPORTING TEMPLATES

Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Drive Templates to Make Your Monthly Reporting Faster and Easier

Updated: 11/03/23

Published: 11/03/23

As a marketer, I make crucial daily decisions that can impact the company I work for. Using my best judgment, I track important metrics like traffic, leads, and customers — and I provide a marketing report to back up my decisions.

While the above metrics are crucial to my marketing funnel and flywheel , a marketing report helps me further explore my findings and properly analyze the data to make the best decisions I can for my team and company.

Marketing reports aren‘t just vital for my work, they’re key to any marketer looking to do what‘s right for their organization. In this article, we’ll explore what a marketing report is and how to build one, and we'll spotlight some examples.

Marketing Reporting

Marketing reporting examples, how to create a marketing report, create your marketing report today.

Marketing reporting is the process of gathering and analyzing marketing metrics to inform future marketing decisions, strategies, and performance. Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.

Marketing reports vary depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report. They can assess where your traffic and leads are coming from, what content they interacted with, if and when they converted, and how long it took to become a customer.

Take our free, 20-minute HubSpot Academy course on marketing reporting to measure success and optimize your efforts.

To reiterate: Marketing reports inform decisions .

You wouldn’t run a marketing report to review data performance or check on an ongoing goal — for these purposes, you’d glance at your marketing dashboards.

Look at it this way. Compiling a marketing report for knowledge’s sake is synonymous with scheduling a meeting to review a project. Who wants to attend a 30-minute session to review what could've been shared via email? Not me.

The same goes for marketing reporting. Reports should help you decide or come to an important conclusion — similar to how a meeting would help your team deliberate about a project or choose between project resources.

In short, marketing reporting is a precious process if used and crafted correctly.

Marketing Reporting Templates

• Track leads.
• Measure CVR.
• Track channel performance.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There are hundreds of reports that you can run to dig into your marketing efforts. At this point, however, you’re likely asking, “Where should I start?“ and ”What are those basic marketing reports I can run to get more comfortable with all the data I’ve been tracking?”.

We’ve pulled together these five marketing reporting examples to get started.

You will need some marketing software (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) to do this. You should also ensure your software allows you to export the data from your software and manipulate it in Excel using pivot tables and other functions.

This free guide and video will teach you how to create an Excel graph, make pivot tables, and use VLOOKUPS and IF functions.

Since we use HubSpot for our reporting needs, I'll show you how to compile these reports using the Marketing Hub tool. (The data below is sample data only and does not represent actual HubSpot marketing data.)

1. Multi-Touch Revenue Marketing Report

As a marketer, you’re a big part of your company’s growth. But unless you can directly tie your impact to revenue, you’ll be forever underappreciated and under-resourced. Multi-touch revenue attribution connects closed gain to every marketing interaction — from the first page view to the final nurturing email.

That way, marketers get the credit they deserve, and marketing execs make more innovative investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, multi-touch revenue attribution can help you stay aligned with your sales team.

HubSpot customers can create multi-touch attribution reports quickly; HubSpot’s attribution tool is built for real people, not data scientists. (It also connects every customer interaction to revenue automatically.)

Navigate to your dashboard and click Add Report > Attribution Report . Select from the set of pre-baked best-practice templates, or create your own custom report.

How to Analyze Revenue Reporting

To analyze revenue reporting, determine what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you most succeeded. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward.

For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!

Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is necessary, you should dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.

2. Channel-Specific Traffic Marketing Report

Understanding where your traffic comes from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. You should invest more resources if you see strong performance from one source.

On the other hand, you can invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.

HubSpot customers can use the Traffic Analytics report (under Reports > Analytics tools in your navigation) to break down traffic by source.

Want to get an even deeper understanding of your traffic patterns? Break down your traffic by geography. (Example: Which sources bring in the most traffic in Brazil?) You can also examine subsets of your website (like your blog vs. your product pages).

How to Analyze a Lifecycle Stage Funnel

This report will give you an overview of how your leads progress through the buying process. Use this report to see what areas of your funnel you must address for greater efficiency.

For example, update and optimize your nurturing program if your report shows that you’re generating leads but not converting any to MQLs. Pulling monthly funnel reports can help you stay on top of the efficiency of your marketing process .

6. Email Marketing Report

When I want to assess my email marketing campaign, I take a look at the following KPIs:

• Number of emails sent
• Unique open rate
• Overall campaign performance

These metrics allow me to analyze the effectiveness of my campaigns by showing me what kind of content performs best in email channels.

7. Social Media Marketing Report

To track the performance of your social media channels, your social marketing report needs to include target audience demographics, likes, followers, engagement, reach, impressions, and your top-performing posts.

Knowing your target audience demographics helps you to better understand the kind of content that would be helpful to them.

For example, if your target audience demographics consist of first-time business owners who are new to marketing, you'll want to create social media content media content best suited to beginners.

Likes, comments, and overall engagement help you fine-tune your social media campaign by showing you which content your current audience prefers.

Furthermore, you‘ll need to track these metrics for each of your organization’s social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, X, and more.

8. SEO Marketing Report

I always include the following in my SEO marketing reports:

• Keyword rankings
• Organic sessions
• Organic landing pages
• Organic conversions

These metrics show how well certain keywords are working to rank your content in SERPs, so you and your team will know which words to rank keep ranking for and if there are any changes in SERP algorithms you need to be aware of.

9. E-commerce Marketing Report

E-commerce marketing occurs over various marketing channels, including social media and Google Analytics. Key metrics you must track are:

• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Transactions
• Pages per session
• Average order value

As I said, you can run many different marketing reports.

This section won’t focus on what specific data to put into your marketing report — that will depend on what type you decide to run. Remember, that process is a bit different if you’re building a marketing dashboard.

Let's discuss how to build marketing reports that inform your decisions and benefit your audience, whether your team, CEO, or customers.

Featured Tool: Marketing Reporting Templates [ Download for Free ]

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

Did Companies See Summer Slumps in 2021? We Analyzed 103,000 Businesses to Find Out

18 Top Marketing Attribution Software Tools for 2024

What Is Marketing Attribution & How Do You Report on It?

Heat Maps: Everything Marketers Need to Know

The Ultimate Guide to Google Data Studio in 2020

KPI Dashboards & How to Use Them in Your Marketing

How to Calculate Marketing ROI [+Free Excel Templates]

Waterfall Charts: The Marketing Graph You Need to Hit Your Goals

How to Create a Funnel Report [Quick Guide]

Tired of Waiting for IT to Generate Your Reports? Try Ad Hoc Analysis

Templates to Make Your Monthly Reporting Faster and Easier

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

Flow through your inbox

Flowrite turns your instructions into ready-to-send emails and messages across your browser.

For companies

Apr 24, 2023

How to send a report in an email with 8 samples and a template

Writing report emails is a solid skill and something easy to learn for everyone. Here we outline the report email format and provide 8 samples that you can use straight away.

Lawrie Jones

Table of contents

We all love reports, right?

Regular reporting is critical for keeping companies working hard and achieving objectives.

They're a great way to show we've accomplished something, and that's worth shouting about!

So if you've spent time collating figures and creating a report, make sure to craft a clear report email to deliver it.

A professional report email offers insights into the information, provides crucial context, and clarifies any issues that need attention. Writing report emails is a solid skill and easy for everyone to learn.

Report emails follow a standard format with a logical structure that's simple to master — and we will show you how.

In this guide to writing report emails, we outline the report message format and provide 8 samples you can use immediately.

How to write a report email

Before we explain how to send a report, here's what not to do...

Inexperienced emailers will create long messages which go into a massive amount of detail to prove they've done something. This is a rookie error that takes time and wastes effort.

Effective reports emails should provide the following (and nothing more):

• Details of what the report is (and why it matters)
• Dates, times, and information covered in the report
• A breakdown of key issues (in professional terms, this is called a precis)
• Highlight any problems, anomalies, challenges, or successes
• Set out the next steps

This provides a simple snapshot of essential information for your boss, customer, or client.

Following this format works because you're adding value to the email, sifting through it to provide what they need.

If they want more, they can read the report, right?

But how do you deliver this information? Thankfully, there's a widely accepted format which we outline below (you're welcome!).

Report email format

The report email format provides a standard structure to introduce your report, include all the details above, offer contact details for further conversations, and include a polite and professional sign-off.

To make it as simple as possible, we can break down the report email format into three parts:

• Report email subject line
• Report email body
• How to end a report email

1. Report email subject lines

Keep your report email subject lines as easy to follow as possible. It's essential to outline what's included in the email. You can also add extra information, such as the dates or times covered and any actions you may require.

Here are some report email subject line examples:

• Daily report – (Insert date)
• May Progress Report & Project Update
• Monthly Sales Report – Month –
• (Time/Date) Incident Report – Action Required
• Urgent Incident Report – PLEASE READ

2. Report email body copy

We'll assume that if you send someone a report, they'll know who you are and why you're messaging. This enables us to ignore some (but not all) pleasantries associated with professional emails.

We still start each message with a professional greeting (Hi, Hello, etc.) along with the person's name, and then hit them with the purpose of the message:

• Attached here is my daily activity report. This covers the date (insert date).

As we've explained above, it's worth providing a short breakdown of what's included:

• To make it easy, I've outlined some of the key things you should know here:
• (Bullet points are a great way to list information)

3. Ending a report email

You've delivered the detail, data, and information, so your job is almost done.

At the end of each email, it's polite to offer the chance to chat about the report and its contents:

• I'm happy to provide any additional information or answer any questions you might have about this report. You can contact me at (insert details).

Now, finish with a professional sign-off (kind regards, yours, etc.), and you're (nearly) done.

Our final piece of advice is: ALWAYS REMEMBER TO INCLUDE ATTACHMENTS.

We've all rushed off an email and hit send without remembering to send the related documents . No matter how great your report messages are, they're worthless without the attachment!

8 report email examples

Understanding how to write a report email and doing it are two different things, which is why reviewing our samples is so important.

In this section, we share 8 report email samples and an explanation about each email, including what we include and why.

Check out these report email messages and learn how to put these principles into practice. We break these samples into subsections covering monthly reports, daily reports, and incident reports.

How to write a monthly report email

Monthly reports are a major headache for many of us, but at least writing emails should now be much simpler.

Our monthly report sample messages make it clear what's being included and pick out the highlights for your time-poor boss.

1. Sample email to send a monthly report

Monthly reports can include performance, sales, and attendance figures. Your boss will be expecting your monthly statement, so we highlight the essentials and leave them to read the report for more info.

• Insert your highlights

2. Monthly working hours report email sample

Logging your hours is the most important email you'll send each month because it'll ensure you get paid.

Like the report email sample above, we provide a breakdown of the essential information your boss will need to know. We also push for the next steps – such as getting your salary sorted out and payment date.

3. Monthly performance report email sample

Performance reports are a chance to highlight what's gone well and what could be improved. In this monthly performance report email sample, we skip over the details and keep things short and sweet.

How to write a daily report email

The daily report email format is similar to those used to send a monthly report. However, you can make some minor tweaks to ensure it's the right length. Given that you'll be sending these every day (the clue is in the name), it's worth developing a template you can use. This will provide consistency your boss will welcome and cut down massively on time spent creating them.

How do you create a template? Here are two daily report samples to get you started...

4. Sample email to send daily report

This daily report email sample focuses more on details and completed tasks. In contrast, the previous monthly report sample focuses more on the bigger picture and outcomes that were accomplished.

• Add your tasks...
• ...but don't include everything

5. Daily activity report sample email to boss

Activity reports provide a snapshot of everything you've achieved that day. It could cover calls answered, clients messaged, deliveries made, or something else. This sample provides a standard and formal way to deliver your activity report. You can cut and paste this each day; just remember to fill in the gaps.

Sample emails for submitting a report

Depending on your job, you may be required to send special reports at some time. Examples can include incident reports, inventory logs, and bug reports.

These are different from the transactional messages above but will require some context, explanation, and information about the next steps. Check out the samples below to see how this is done.

6. Incident report email sample

If you've identified a fault or experienced an outage, you'll need to provide an incident report. These reports clarify the causes of an incident, its impact, and the actions you're taking to ensure it never happens again.

7. Inventory report email sample

Inventory reports provide details on the stocks and supplies you have in your business (and those that are running low!). Here's how to write an email to send an inventory report

• Item name + quantity needed

8. Bug report email sample

Next time you find a pesky bug affecting software, use this sample email for a bug report. Raising awareness of bugs is great, but your customer or colleague will want to know what action you're taking to fix the problem.

Report email template

If the report email samples here aren't hitting the spot, this template is what you need. This customizable report email template can be cut, pasted, edited, and updated to suit your circumstances.

• List out your key points

Writing report emails using Flowrite's AI-assisted email writer is the fastest way to do your duty of sending reports. This is how it works:

Our Chrome extensions works where you work (Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp, etc.) so you can stay efficient while working on your reports.

Final report

OK, so now we are on the same page.

While writing report emails isn't exciting, they are pretty easy, so they shouldn't take too long to create (especially if you use our samples or customizable template).

The core of an excellent report email is the same as any piece of professional correspondence: being clear, consistent, and conveying essential information as quickly as possible.

Write it, send it, and get on with the rest of your day.

Supercharge your communication with Flowrite

Write emails and messages faster across Google Chrome.

Explore Flowrite

Start using Flowrite today

Try it yourself

Project status update to client

Reply to: "

Received message

hope your well short update 1st drafts by 15th and final version before deadline we are on track rough drafts this week attached below not final copies please provide feedback another update next week

Generate a reply

Generate an outreach

Share this article

Related articles

Project status report email with samples and templates

Great project status updates and reports are essential to project management. Here's how to do it in an email.

How to email a manager with 9 sample emails

Messaging your manager should be easy. Here you will find a few tips and helpful email examples.

Reply to boss email with 10 samples and templates

Replying to email from your boss effectively is critical. Use these 10 examples to send better reply emails.

We use cookies to analyze site performance and deliver a better experience for visitors.

Product updates

Read the latest →

About Flowrite

Get to know us →

Productivity

© 2023 Flowrite

• Privacy Policy

Home » Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Table of Contents

Research Report

Definition:

Research Report is a written document that presents the results of a research project or study, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusions, in a clear and objective manner.

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the findings of the research to the intended audience, which could be other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public.

Components of Research Report

Components of Research Report are as follows:

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for the research report and provides a brief overview of the research question or problem being investigated. It should include a clear statement of the purpose of the study and its significance or relevance to the field of research. It may also provide background information or a literature review to help contextualize the research.

Literature Review

The literature review provides a critical analysis and synthesis of the existing research and scholarship relevant to the research question or problem. It should identify the gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the literature and show how the current study addresses these issues. The literature review also establishes the theoretical framework or conceptual model that guides the research.

Methodology

The methodology section describes the research design, methods, and procedures used to collect and analyze data. It should include information on the sample or participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis techniques. The methodology should be clear and detailed enough to allow other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the study in a clear and objective manner. It should provide a detailed description of the data and statistics used to answer the research question or test the hypothesis. Tables, graphs, and figures may be included to help visualize the data and illustrate the key findings.

The discussion section interprets the results of the study and explains their significance or relevance to the research question or problem. It should also compare the current findings with those of previous studies and identify the implications for future research or practice. The discussion should be based on the results presented in the previous section and should avoid speculation or unfounded conclusions.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the study and restates the main argument or thesis presented in the introduction. It should also provide a brief overview of the contributions of the study to the field of research and the implications for practice or policy.

The references section lists all the sources cited in the research report, following a specific citation style, such as APA or MLA.

The appendices section includes any additional material, such as data tables, figures, or instruments used in the study, that could not be included in the main text due to space limitations.

Types of Research Report

Types of Research Report are as follows:

Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master’s or Doctoral degree, although it can also be written by researchers or scholars in other fields.

Research Paper

Research paper is a type of research report. A research paper is a document that presents the results of a research study or investigation. Research papers can be written in a variety of fields, including science, social science, humanities, and business. They typically follow a standard format that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections.

Technical Report

A technical report is a detailed report that provides information about a specific technical or scientific problem or project. Technical reports are often used in engineering, science, and other technical fields to document research and development work.

Progress Report

A progress report provides an update on the progress of a research project or program over a specific period of time. Progress reports are typically used to communicate the status of a project to stakeholders, funders, or project managers.

Feasibility Report

A feasibility report assesses the feasibility of a proposed project or plan, providing an analysis of the potential risks, benefits, and costs associated with the project. Feasibility reports are often used in business, engineering, and other fields to determine the viability of a project before it is undertaken.

Field Report

A field report documents observations and findings from fieldwork, which is research conducted in the natural environment or setting. Field reports are often used in anthropology, ecology, and other social and natural sciences.

Experimental Report

An experimental report documents the results of a scientific experiment, including the hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. Experimental reports are often used in biology, chemistry, and other sciences to communicate the results of laboratory experiments.

Case Study Report

A case study report provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case or situation, often used in psychology, social work, and other fields to document and understand complex cases or phenomena.

Literature Review Report

A literature review report synthesizes and summarizes existing research on a specific topic, providing an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject. Literature review reports are often used in social sciences, education, and other fields to identify gaps in the literature and guide future research.

Research Report Example

Following is a Research Report Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Academic Performance among High School Students

This study aims to investigate the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students. The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The findings indicate that there is a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students. The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers, as they highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities.

Introduction:

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of high school students. With the widespread use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, students can connect with friends, share photos and videos, and engage in discussions on a range of topics. While social media offers many benefits, concerns have been raised about its impact on academic performance. Many studies have found a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance among high school students (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Paul, Baker, & Cochran, 2012).

Given the growing importance of social media in the lives of high school students, it is important to investigate its impact on academic performance. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students.

Methodology:

The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies and was designed to measure the frequency and duration of social media use, as well as academic performance.

The participants were selected using a convenience sampling technique, and the survey questionnaire was distributed in the classroom during regular school hours. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.

The findings indicate that the majority of high school students use social media platforms on a daily basis, with Facebook being the most popular platform. The results also show a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students.

Discussion:

The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. The negative correlation between social media use and academic performance suggests that strategies should be put in place to help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. For example, educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the negative impact of social media on academic performance among high school students. The findings highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. Further research is needed to explore the specific mechanisms by which social media use affects academic performance and to develop effective strategies for addressing this issue.

Limitations:

One limitation of this study is the use of convenience sampling, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Future studies should use random sampling techniques to increase the representativeness of the sample. Another limitation is the use of self-reported measures, which may be subject to social desirability bias. Future studies could use objective measures of social media use and academic performance, such as tracking software and school records.

Implications:

The findings of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. Educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. For example, teachers could use social media platforms to share relevant educational resources and facilitate online discussions. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. They could also engage in open communication with their children to understand their social media use and its impact on their academic performance. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students. For example, schools could implement social media policies that restrict access during class time and encourage responsible use.

References:

• Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2010). Facebook® and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1237-1245.
• Paul, J. A., Baker, H. M., & Cochran, J. D. (2012). Effect of online social networking on student academic performance. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 8(1), 1-19.
• Pantic, I. (2014). Online social networking and mental health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(10), 652-657.
• Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 948-958.

Note*: Above mention, Example is just a sample for the students’ guide. Do not directly copy and paste as your College or University assignment. Kindly do some research and Write your own.

Applications of Research Report

Research reports have many applications, including:

• Communicating research findings: The primary application of a research report is to communicate the results of a study to other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public. The report serves as a way to share new knowledge, insights, and discoveries with others in the field.
• Informing policy and practice : Research reports can inform policy and practice by providing evidence-based recommendations for decision-makers. For example, a research report on the effectiveness of a new drug could inform regulatory agencies in their decision-making process.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research in a particular area. Other researchers may use the findings and methodology of a report to develop new research questions or to build on existing research.
• Evaluating programs and interventions : Research reports can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and interventions in achieving their intended outcomes. For example, a research report on a new educational program could provide evidence of its impact on student performance.
• Demonstrating impact : Research reports can be used to demonstrate the impact of research funding or to evaluate the success of research projects. By presenting the findings and outcomes of a study, research reports can show the value of research to funders and stakeholders.
• Enhancing professional development : Research reports can be used to enhance professional development by providing a source of information and learning for researchers and practitioners in a particular field. For example, a research report on a new teaching methodology could provide insights and ideas for educators to incorporate into their own practice.

How to write Research Report

Here are some steps you can follow to write a research report:

• Identify the research question: The first step in writing a research report is to identify your research question. This will help you focus your research and organize your findings.
• Conduct research : Once you have identified your research question, you will need to conduct research to gather relevant data and information. This can involve conducting experiments, reviewing literature, or analyzing data.
• Organize your findings: Once you have gathered all of your data, you will need to organize your findings in a way that is clear and understandable. This can involve creating tables, graphs, or charts to illustrate your results.
• Write the report: Once you have organized your findings, you can begin writing the report. Start with an introduction that provides background information and explains the purpose of your research. Next, provide a detailed description of your research methods and findings. Finally, summarize your results and draw conclusions based on your findings.
• Proofread and edit: After you have written your report, be sure to proofread and edit it carefully. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure that your report is well-organized and easy to read.
• Include a reference list: Be sure to include a list of references that you used in your research. This will give credit to your sources and allow readers to further explore the topic if they choose.
• Format your report: Finally, format your report according to the guidelines provided by your instructor or organization. This may include formatting requirements for headings, margins, fonts, and spacing.

Purpose of Research Report

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the results of a research study to a specific audience, such as peers in the same field, stakeholders, or the general public. The report provides a detailed description of the research methods, findings, and conclusions.

Some common purposes of a research report include:

• Sharing knowledge: A research report allows researchers to share their findings and knowledge with others in their field. This helps to advance the field and improve the understanding of a particular topic.
• Identifying trends: A research report can identify trends and patterns in data, which can help guide future research and inform decision-making.
• Addressing problems: A research report can provide insights into problems or issues and suggest solutions or recommendations for addressing them.
• Evaluating programs or interventions : A research report can evaluate the effectiveness of programs or interventions, which can inform decision-making about whether to continue, modify, or discontinue them.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies.

When to Write Research Report

A research report should be written after completing the research study. This includes collecting data, analyzing the results, and drawing conclusions based on the findings. Once the research is complete, the report should be written in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

In academic settings, research reports are often required as part of coursework or as part of a thesis or dissertation. In this case, the report should be written according to the guidelines provided by the instructor or institution.

In other settings, such as in industry or government, research reports may be required to inform decision-making or to comply with regulatory requirements. In these cases, the report should be written as soon as possible after the research is completed in order to inform decision-making in a timely manner.

Overall, the timing of when to write a research report depends on the purpose of the research, the expectations of the audience, and any regulatory requirements that need to be met. However, it is important to complete the report in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

Characteristics of Research Report

There are several characteristics of a research report that distinguish it from other types of writing. These characteristics include:

• Objective: A research report should be written in an objective and unbiased manner. It should present the facts and findings of the research study without any personal opinions or biases.
• Systematic: A research report should be written in a systematic manner. It should follow a clear and logical structure, and the information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand and follow.
• Detailed: A research report should be detailed and comprehensive. It should provide a thorough description of the research methods, results, and conclusions.
• Accurate : A research report should be accurate and based on sound research methods. The findings and conclusions should be supported by data and evidence.
• Organized: A research report should be well-organized. It should include headings and subheadings to help the reader navigate the report and understand the main points.
• Clear and concise: A research report should be written in clear and concise language. The information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand, and unnecessary jargon should be avoided.
• Citations and references: A research report should include citations and references to support the findings and conclusions. This helps to give credit to other researchers and to provide readers with the opportunity to further explore the topic.

Advantages of Research Report

Research reports have several advantages, including:

• Communicating research findings: Research reports allow researchers to communicate their findings to a wider audience, including other researchers, stakeholders, and the general public. This helps to disseminate knowledge and advance the understanding of a particular topic.
• Providing evidence for decision-making : Research reports can provide evidence to inform decision-making, such as in the case of policy-making, program planning, or product development. The findings and conclusions can help guide decisions and improve outcomes.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research on a particular topic. Other researchers can build on the findings and conclusions of the report, which can lead to further discoveries and advancements in the field.
• Demonstrating expertise: Research reports can demonstrate the expertise of the researchers and their ability to conduct rigorous and high-quality research. This can be important for securing funding, promotions, and other professional opportunities.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies. Producing a high-quality research report can help ensure compliance with these requirements.

Limitations of Research Report

Despite their advantages, research reports also have some limitations, including:

• Time-consuming: Conducting research and writing a report can be a time-consuming process, particularly for large-scale studies. This can limit the frequency and speed of producing research reports.
• Expensive: Conducting research and producing a report can be expensive, particularly for studies that require specialized equipment, personnel, or data. This can limit the scope and feasibility of some research studies.
• Limited generalizability: Research studies often focus on a specific population or context, which can limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations or contexts.
• Potential bias : Researchers may have biases or conflicts of interest that can influence the findings and conclusions of the research study. Additionally, participants may also have biases or may not be representative of the larger population, which can limit the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Accessibility: Research reports may be written in technical or academic language, which can limit their accessibility to a wider audience. Additionally, some research may be behind paywalls or require specialized access, which can limit the ability of others to read and use the findings.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Data Collection – Methods Types and Examples

Delimitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Process – Steps, Examples and Tips

Research Design – Types, Methods and Examples

Institutional Review Board – Application Sample...

Evaluating Research – Process, Examples and...

How to write a report? | B2 First (FCE)

Many people believe that reports are boring and dry , but reports give you a great opportunity to score really high marks easily!

If you are not a creative person (and that’s okay) then a report is a great choice for you in part two of the B2 First writing exam.

What is a report?

A report is a formal piece of writing similar in tone to an essay. You always write reports in B2 First (FCE) to a superior, this could be a teacher a director or anyone who you should be respectful.

• analyses a present situation and often has recommendations
• is divided into sections and contains factual information 
• is written in a formal style
• uses headings for each section

Check our Writing Guide in this article below to see how to write an FCE report.

FCE, CAE, CPE

Practice tests online, b2 first (fce) report: structure, b2 first (fce) report: writing guide.

We will use the example FCE report topic below:

Last year a new sport and leisure centre opened in your home town. You have recently received the following letter from the manager of the centre:

I am writing to all members of the Active Leisure Club tgo thank you for your custom over the last year. We want to make the facilities even better this year! Please send a short report to us, telling us what you think are the best and worst aspects of the club. We also want to hear your suggestions for new facilities…

Write your report to the manager of the club (between 140-190 words) .

Step 1: Find – key points, topic and target reader

You need to start writing your report by finding the key points/information, the subject and the person to whom you are writing

I am writing to all members of the Active Leisure Club to thank you for your custom over the last year. We want to make the facilities even better this year! Please send a short report to us, telling us the best and worst aspects of the club. We also want to hear your suggestions for new facilities …

Topic: Active Leisure Club wants to improve their facilities

Main key points:

• describe the best aspects of the club
• describe the worst aspects of the club
• suggest new facilities

Target reader: manager of the centre:

As soon as we’ve analyzed the task and extracted all the information that we need we can start building the report structure and writing it.

Step 2: Title

Although the title is not obligatory , it is certainly an attractive addition and could be something like:

• Report on …….   + Topic
• Topic + : a report

If you remember in the previous step (Step 1) we found the topic.

Let’s use it now:

 Title: Report on Active Leisure Club facilities Title: Active Leisure Club facilities : a report

Step 3: Introduction

Firstly, you have to state the purpose of the report as clearly as possible – this gives the reader a clear idea of what to expect and sets the tone for the rest of the report.

The purpose of the report is nothing more than three points you found (in step 1)

Let’s use them now:

The purpose of this report is to outline the best (point 1) and worst parts (point 2) of our club, as well as to recommend improvements to the facilities. (point 3)

Finally, you mention how you collected the data for your report this is not something that you have to do but it can help your report stand out a little bit.

The purpose of this report is to outline the best and worst parts of our club, as well as to recommend improvements to the facilities. The data for the report was collected based on the opinions of club members (source)

Complete and finished introduction with title:

Title: Report on Active Leisure Club facilities

The purpose of this report is to outline the best (point 1) and worst parts of (point 2) our club, as well as to recommend improvements to the facilities. (point 3) The data for the report was collected based on the opinions of club members. (source)

Practice, Write & Improve

Step 4: the body paragraphs (main content) .

In the main content, you should answer the main key points that you discovered in the task  (see step 1) under suitable subheadings , and each is placed in a separate section/paragraph .

Main key points  (see step 1):

See the example main content below, with additional annotations you may find useful:

The best aspects of the club –  add a   heading  Most members seem to enjoy the swimming pool with its daily water exercise classes and the opportunity to swim in 50-metre lanes. It also appears that offering a child care programme is appreciated by the majority of our members since many of them have families, but still would like to use the facilities of the club.

[first key point answered -be st aspects]

The worst aspects of the club – add heading  According to most of the members I have spoken to, the café does not meet their expectations with below-average food and slow service. Another problem is the state of the gymnasium which , in general, is avoided by many because of broken equipment and a lack of staff during peak times.

[second key point answered – worse aspects]

Suggestions

[…… here you can add one more paragraph and give suggestions , OR include them in the conclusion]

                   – formal/indirect language – official

                   – transitional words, expressions and conjunctions, which link the sentences and make the text more fluid

Step 5: Conclusion

After writing the entire content, we only have a summary where we can also include our suggestions or recommendations –  to do this we can use some specific language that is there to persuade the manager of the centre to take up our idea and implement it.

Suggestions & conclusions – add a heading  In the final analysis, the best solutions seem to be to improve the quality of the menu and the service at the café as well as the maintenance schedule and number of staff at the gymnasium. If manager is decided to follow recommendations , the experience of members would improved                 – persuasive language (recommendations)

                – suggestions

Submit your B2 First (FCE) Report

See full report…, full report.

Report on Active Leisure Club facilities

The purpose of this report is to outline the best and worst parts of our club, as well as to recommend improvements to the facilities. The data for the report was collected based on the opinions of club members

The best aspects of the club Most members seem to enjoy the swimming pool with it’s daily water exercise classes and the opportunity to swim in 50-metre lanes. It also appears that offering a child care programme is appreciated by the majority of our members since many of them have families, but still would like to use the facilities of the club.

The worst aspects of the club According to most of the members I have spoken to, the café does not meet their expectations with below-average food and slow service. Another problem is the state of the gymnasium which, in general, is avoided by many because of broken equipment and a lack of staff during peak times.

Suggestions & conclusions In the final analysis, the best solutions seem to be to improve the quality of the menu and the service at the café as well as the maintenance schedule and number of staff at the gymnasium. If manager is decided to follow recommendations, the experience of members would improved

To sum up….

 A report is a formal paper, it has to be concise, well-organized, which makes it recommended to use bullet points and headings  so that the reader can quickly find the information they are looking for in your text.

The language of a report is expected to be formal and objective. For this reason, you should avoid including yourself or your views in most of your sentences.

B2 First (FCE) Report: Example Answers

Fce report sample 1.

Your college has just published the first issue of the new college magazine. The organisers are interested in knowing what students thought about it, so they have asked you to write a report. In your report, you should talk about what the students liked and disliked about the articles, the sports section and the news section. Then, you should make suggestions on how to improve the magazine.

Write a report .

Student’s FCE Report Answer:

The New College Magazine

Introduction The purpose of this report is to outline students’ opinions about the new college magazine, and to make recommendations based on their views.

The articles Most students thought the articles were interesting and well written. However, they did not talk about modern topics, so some students found this part of the magazine a little boring.

The sports section It is thought that the sports section is good, but most articles were about football or basketball. This is not a good thing because most of our sporty students play rugby, not football or basketball.

The news section Many students complained about the news section, because it only focused on news about the college. These students were expecting to read some news about the city, too.

Recommendations In order to solve the problems above, I recommend taking some measures. Firstly, article writers should focus more on technology and other modern issues. Secondly, we should consider writing more about rugby and less about other sports. Finally, we should include some news about our city. If we do these things, the magazine will be more interesting to our students.

Get Your FCE Report Checked!

Fce report sample 2.

The gym you work for has been losing members recently and would like to know why they are leaving. The gym manager has asked you to write a report about why these customers are leaving. In your report you should specify what the problems are and should give recommendations for improvement.

Student’s FCE Report Answer:

Improving Our Gym

Introduction

The aim of this report is to explain the main reasons why members are leaving the gym. After interviewing some clients, we have identified some serious problems.

Limited opening hours Some members have complained that the gym opens a little late for them. For this reason, workers cannot exercise before going to work. If the gym opened at 7 a.m., clients could exercise easily before going to work.

The changing rooms Many of the lockers are broken so customers cannot leave their belongings in a safe place. Also, some of the showers are not working properly so members have to queue before having a shower. In order to solve this, I suggest replacing all lockers and showers immediately.

Lack of parking spaces Some previous members have joined gyms which have a parking lot. Although we cannot build a parking lot, we can offer a parking area for bicycles. As a result, this might encourage members to use their bikes to come to the gym.

Conclusion To sum up, I believe that if we take care of these problems, members will be happier and will decide to stay with us.

B2 First (FCE) Report: Writing Topics

Example report question 1.

A group of students from Britain would like to visit your home town as part of an exchange programme. Their leader has asked you to write a report describing what there is to see and do in the town, and to describe some of the other services and facilities that would be available to them.

Write your report .

Example Report Question 2

You have just come back from a visit to a local museum organised by your school the principal has asked you to write a report about the museum and what you saw there, saying whether it is of interest for all age groups in the school.

Write a report for the Principal

Example Report Question 3

You have just come back from a two-day study trip to a historic town. Your teacher has asked you to write a report about your visit, saying what you saw during the two days and whether you would recommend a similar visit for other students.

Write your report

B2 First (FCE) Report: Writing Checklist

After writing your text, you can check it yourself using the writing checklist below.

How to do that? Simply check your text/email by answering the questions one by one:

• Have I covered all the key information required by the task?
• Have I written only information which is relevant to the task?
• Have I developed the basic points in the task with my own ideas?

Communicative Achievement

• Have I achieved the main purpose(s) of the text (for example, explaining, persuading, suggesting, apologising, comparing, etc.)?
• Have I communicated a balance of straightforward and more complex ideas?
• Have I used a suitable style and register (formal or informal) for the task?

Organisation

• Have I used paragraphs appropriately to organise my ideas?
• Have I used other organisational features appropriately for the genre of the text (for example, titles, headings, openings, closings, etc.)?
• Is the connection between my ideas clear and easy for the reader to follow? (For example, have I used appropriate linking words, pronouns, etc. to refer to different things within the text?)
• Are the ideas balanced appropriately, with suitable attention and space given to each one?
• Have I used a wide range of vocabulary?
• Have I avoided repeating the same words and phrases?
• Have I used a range of simple and more complex grammatical structures?
• Have I correctly used any common phrases which are relevant to the specific task or topic?
• Is my use of grammar accurate?
• Is my spelling accurate?

More than Practice Tests

B2 first (fce) report: tips.

• You may use invented statistics to provide a succinct summary of your results.
• Use h eadings. They will make it clear that your report is not an essay or review.
• Use lists of numbered points or bullets where appropriate.
• Divide your report into sections according to the input.
•   Develop the ideas in the task input.
• Include a sentence summarising your opinion at the beginning of the final section of your report.
• Use an impersonal, formal style.

B2 First (FCE) Report: Grading

B2 first (fce) report: useful language & phrases.

We will finish it with some useful vocabulary mostly used to organize information. Although it is taking a shortcut, if you learn several expressions for each paragraph in each type of text that could be on your exam, you will certainly be able to create a very consistent and well-organized text.

Introduction (the goal of the report)

The aim of this report is to As requested, I am writing this report to This report aims to outline/assess The purpose behind this report is to

Development

The first observation to make concerns… It has to been stressed that… According to (the majority of respondents)… In spite of (the fact that)… Despite (the fact that)… The outlook for …… is (far from) bright/optimistic/depressing/daunting The future looks bleak/remains uncertain/is promising This seems unlikely in the near/foreseeable future

Recommendations

I suggest/recommend I would like to suggest/recommend I therefore suggest I advise you (not) to I believe it would be beneficial It would be advisable to You may wish/want to consider If you wish to…, you should If we wish to…, we ought to

Provided that these recommendations are taken into consideration,… In conclusion,… From the research one can conclude that…

What is your level of English?

Case IQ’s newest version includes pre-set templates, as well as AI-powered copilots for case summarization and translation. Register here to join our live run-down of these new features on June 5th!

• Resource Center

Investigation Report Example: How to Write an Investigative Report

• What is the Importance of an Investigative Report?
• How to Write an Investigative Report: "Musts"
• How CaseIQ Can Help

Preliminary Case Information

Here’s how to write an investigation report that is clear, complete, and compliant.

Do you dread the end of an investigation because you hate writing investigative reports? You’re not alone.

However, because it’s an important showcase of the investigation, you can’t cut corners on this critical investigation step. Your investigation report reflects on you and your investigation, so make sure it’s as clear, comprehensive, accurate, and polished.

How do you write an investigation report? What are the parts of an investigation report? What's an investigation report example? In this guide, you’ll learn how to make your workplace incident reports effective and efficient.

How mature are your workplace investigations?

An investigations maturity model can reveal your investigations program's strong points and areas for improvement. Learn how to evaluate your program in our upcoming fireside chat with investigations expert Meric Bloch.

An investigation report can:

• Spark some sort of action based on the findings it presents
• Record of the steps of the investigation
• Provide information for legal actions
• Provide valuable data to inform control and preventive measures

In short, your report documents what happened during the investigation and suggests what to do next.

In addition, the process of writing an investigation report can help you approach the investigation in a new way. You might think of more questions to ask the parties involved or understand an aspect of the incident that was unclear.

How to Write an Investigative Report: “Musts”

Before you begin, it’s important to understand the three critical tasks of a workplace investigative report.

• It must be organized in a such way that anybody internally or externally can understand it without having to reference other materials. That means it should have little to no jargon or specialized language and be a stand-alone summary of your investigation from start to finish.
• It must document the investigative findings objectively and accurately and provide decision makers with enough information to determine whether they should take further action.  With just one read-through, stakeholders should be able to understand what happened and how to handle it.
• It must indicate whether the allegations were substantiated, unsubstantiated, or whether there’s something missing that is needed to reach a conclusion. Use the evidence you’ve gathered to back up your analysis.

You might be wondering, “What are the contents of an investigation report?” Now that you know what your report should accomplish, we’ll move on to the sections it should include.

Want to streamline the report-writing process?

Download our free investigation report template to ensure you have consistent, compliant, and complete reports for every case.

Get the Template

Investigation Report Format: What to Include in Your Workplace Incident Report

Executive summary, incident summary, allegation subject, investigation details & notes, investigation interviews, conclusion & recommendations, final edits, how case iq can help.

The executive summary should be a concise overview of the investigation from beginning to end. It should not contain any information that is not already in the investigation report.

This may be the most important component of the investigation report because many readers won’t need to go beyond this section. High-level stakeholders get an overall picture of the allegations, investigation, and outcome without having to pore over the details.

To make this section easy to read, write in an active voice. For example: “I interviewed Carrie Smith,” not “Carrie Smith was interviewed.”

Example:   On February 23 rd , 2023, the Human Resources Manager received a written complaint of sexual harassment submitted by Carrie Smith, the stockroom manager. Smith claimed that on February 22 nd , 2023, her supervisor, Mark Robinson, pushed her against the wall in the boardroom and groped her breasts. Smith also alleged that Robinson on another occasion told her she was “too pretty” to be working in the stockroom and that he could arrange for a promotion for her. 

On February 24th, the Human Resources Manager assigned the case to me.

On February 25th, I interviewed Carrie Smith and two witnesses to the alleged February 22 nd  incident, John Jones and Pamela Miller. Jones and Miller did not corroborate the groping allegation but said they saw Smith running out of the boardroom in tears. Miller also reported hearing Robinson tell another employee, Sara Brown, that she had “a great rack”. 

On February 26 th , I interviewed Mark Robinson. He denied the groping incident and said he was “just joking around” with her in the boardroom but did not actually touch her and that Smith was too sensitive. He admitted to telling Smith she was too pretty to work in the stockroom, but contends that it was meant as a compliment.

Based on the interviews with the complainant and the alleged offender, I find that the complainant’s allegation of sexual harassment is substantiated.

It is my recommendation that the company provide the respondent with a written account of the findings of the investigation and a reminder of the company’s expectations for employee behavior. I also recommend that the respondent receive sexual harassment training and be advised that repeated harassing behavior may result in further discipline up to and including termination.

This section outlines the preliminary case information in a concise format, with only the most important details. It can go either before or after the executive summary.

• Your name and investigator identification number, if you have one
• Case number
• Date the case was assigned to you
• The date the report was reviewed
• How the report was received (e.g. hotline, email to HR manager, verbal report to supervisor)
• Name of the reporter/complainant

If the reporter is an employee, record their:

• Email address
• Work telephone number
• Employment level/position
• Employee identification number
• Department identification number

If the source  is not an employee, only record their:

• Personal telephone number

In either case, note the date that the report was submitted, as well as the date(s) of the alleged incident(s).

The purpose of this section is to answer the who, what, where, and when about the incident.

• What type of case is it? For example, is the case alleging harassment, discrimination, fraud, or other workplace misconduct?
• Specify the case type further.  For example, is it  sexual  harassment,  gender  discrimination,  accounts payable  fraud, etc.
• Who is the alleged victim?  For example, is it the reporter, another employee, a customer, or the whole company?
• If the alleged victim is an employee, identify the person’s supervisor.
• Were any other people involved besides the subject and the alleged victim?
• Where did the incident(s) take place?
• When did the incident(s) occur?
• Capture details of the allegation.  Example : Stacey Smith alleges that John Jones, an accounts payables clerk, has been funneling payments to a dummy supplier that he has set up in the company’s procurement system. Stacey says that she noticed a discrepancy when one of the suppliers she deals with questioned a payment and she had to ask an accounts payable clerk, Tom Tierney, to pull the file for her. When Tom accidentally brought Stacey the wrong file, she saw that monthly payments were being made to a supplier she had never heard of, and that the address of the supplier was John Jones’s address. Stacey knows John’s address because her sister is John’s next-door neighbor.

Describe the allegation or complaint in simple, clear language. Avoid using jargon, acronyms, or technical terms that the average reader outside the company may not understand.

In this section, note details about the alleged bad actor. Some of this information might be included in the initial report/complaint, but others you might have to dig for, especially if the subject isn’t an employee of the organization.

For every subject, include their:

• Email (work contact if they’re an employee, personal if not)
• Telephone number (see above)

If the subject of the allegation is an employee, also include their:

• Employment status (e.g. full-time, part-time, intern, contractor, etc.)
• Business location

Begin outlining the investigation details by defining the scope. It’s important to keep the scope of the investigation focused narrowly on the allegation and avoid drawing separate but related investigations into the report.

Example:   The investigation will focus on the anonymous tip received through the whistleblower hotline. The objective of the investigation is to determine whether the allegation reported via the hotline is true or false.

Next, record a description of each action taken during the investigation. This becomes a diary of your investigation, showing everything that was done during the investigation, who did it, and when.

For each action, outline:

• Type of action (e.g. initial review, meeting, contacting parties, conducting an interview, following up)
• Person responsible for the action
• Date when the action was completed
• Brief description of the action (i.e. who you met with, where, and for how long)

Be thorough and detailed, because this section of your report can be an invaluable resource if you are ever challenged on any details of your investigation.

Write a summary of each interview. These should be brief outlines listed separately for each interview.

Include the following information:

• Who conducted the interview
• Who was interviewed
• Where the interview took place
• Date of the interview

Include a list of people who refused to be interviewed or could not be interviewed and why.

Write a Report for Each Interview

This is an expanded version of the summaries documented above. Even though some of the information is repeated, be sure to include it so that you can use the summaries and reports separately as standalone documentation of the interviews conducted.

For each interview, document:

• Location of the interview
• Summary of the substance of the interview, based on your interview notes or recording.

Example:   I asked Jane Jameson to describe the events of July 13 th , 2016. She said: “After work, Peter approached me as I was leaving the building and asked me if I would like to work on his team. When I said that I was happy working with my current team, he told me that my team had too many women on it and that ‘all those hormones are causing problems’ so I should think about moving to a ‘sane’ team.”

I asked her how she reacted to that. She said: I told him that I found that offensive and he said that I needed to stop being so sensitive. I just walked away.”

I asked Jane to describe the events of the next day. She said: “The next day he came to my desk and asked me if I had given any thought to moving to his team. I repeated that I was happy where I was. At that point he started massaging my shoulders and said that moving to his team would have its ‘perks’. I asked him to stop twice and he wouldn’t. Sally walked over and told him to get lost and ‘leave Jane alone’ and he left.”

I thanked Jane for her cooperation and concluded the interview.

Assess Credibility

Aside from collecting the evidence, it is also an investigator’s job to analyze the evidence and reach a conclusion. Include a credibility assessment for each interview subject in the interview report. Describe your reasons for determining that the interviewee is or isn’t a credible source of information.

This involves assessing the credibility of the witness. The EEOC has published guidelines that recommend examining the following factors:

• Plausibility – Is the testimony believable and does it make sense?
• Demeanor – Did the person seem to be telling the truth?
• Motive to falsify – Does the person have a reason to lie?
• Corroboration – Is there testimony or evidence that corroborates the witness’s account?
• Past record – Does the subject have a history of similar behavior?

Example:   I consider Jane to be a credible interviewee based on the corroboration of her story with Sally and also because she has nothing to gain by reporting these incidents. She has no prior relationship with Peter and seemed genuinely upset by his behavior.

A well-written report is the only way to prove that an investigation was carried out thoroughly.

Download this free cheat sheet to learn best practices of writing investigation reports.

Get the Cheat Sheet

In this section, describe all the evidence obtained. This could include:

• Video or audio footage
• Email or messaging (e.g. Slack, Teams, etc.) records
• Employee security access records
• Computer or other device login records
• Documents or papers
• Physical objects (e.g. photos, posters, broken objects, etc.)

Number each piece of evidence for easy reference in your chain of evidence document.

As you gather and analyze evidence , it’s critically important to include and fully consider everything you find. Ignoring evidence that doesn’t support your conclusion will undermine your investigation and your credibility as an investigator. If you aren’t weighing some pieces as heavily as others, make sure you have a good explanation as to why.

In the final section of your report, detail your findings and conclusion. In other words, answer the questions that your investigation set out to answer.

This is where your analysis comes into play. However, be sure to only address the issue(s) being examined only, and don’t include any information that is not supported by fact. Otherwise, you could be accused of bias or speculation if the subject challenges your findings.

Investigation Findings Example:   My findings indicate that, based on the evidence, Bill’s allegation that Jim blocked him from the promotion is true. Jim’s behavior towards Bill is consistent with the definition of racial discrimination. The company’s code of conduct forbids discrimination; therefore, Jim’s behavior constitutes employee misconduct.

It’s important for your conclusion to be defensible, based on the evidence you have presented in your investigation report. Reference reliable evidence that is relevant to the case. Finally, explain that you’ve considered all the evidence, not just pieces that support your conclusion.

In some cases, you might have been asked to provide recommendations, too. Depending on your conclusion, you may recommend that the company:

• Does nothing
• Provides counseling or training
• Disciplines the employee(s)
• Transfers the employee(s)
• Terminates or demotes the employee(s)

Example: It is my recommendation that the company provide the respondent (Jim) with a written account of the findings of the investigation and a reminder of the company’s expectations for employee behavior. I also recommend that the respondent (Jim) receive anti-discrimination training and be advised that repeated discriminatory behavior may result in further discipline up to and including termination.

Grammatical errors or missed words can take even the best investigation report from professional to sloppy. That’s why checking your work before submitting the report is perhaps the most important step of them all.

Keep in mind that your investigative report may be seen by your supervisors, directors, and even C-level executives in your company, as well as attorneys and judges if the case goes to court.

If spelling, grammar, and punctuation aren’t your strong suit, enlist the services of a writer-friend or colleague to proofread your report. Or, if you’re a lone wolf kind of worker, upgrade your skills with a writing course or a read-through of books like  The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. At the very least, remember to run a spell check before you pass on any document to others.

Finally, do a quick scan to make sure you’ve included all the necessary sections and that case details are consistent.

Want more report-writing tips?

Watch our free webinar to get advice on what to include (and not include), proper language and tone, formatting tips, and more on how to effectively make an investigation report.

Watch the Webinar

RELATED: 3 Investigation Report Writing Mistakes You’re Still Making

Frequently Asked Questions

How do i write an investigation report.

To write an investigation report, you should ensure it's clear, comprehensive, accurate, and organized, documenting findings objectively and providing decision-makers with enough information to determine further action.

What are the basic parts of an investigation report?

The basic parts of an investigation report include an executive summary, preliminary case information, incident summary, allegation subject details, investigation details and notes, investigation interviews, evidence documentation, conclusion and recommendations, and final edits.

What is the purpose of an investigation report?

The purpose of an investigation report is to document the steps and findings of an investigation, providing a clear record of what occurred, suggesting actions to be taken, and potentially serving as valuable data for legal actions or informing control and preventive measures.

If you’re still managing cases with spreadsheets or outdated systems, you’re putting your organization at risk.

With all your investigation information stored in one place, you can create comprehensive, compliant investigation reports with a single click. Case IQ’s powerful case management software pulls all the information from the case file automatically, so you can close cases faster.

Learn more about how Case IQ can reduce resolution time and improve your organization’s investigations here.

Related Resources

What to ask in a whistleblower hotline use survey (and why it’s important), how an hr analyst can help your organization reduce risk.

Academic Report

Report generator.

As a way of evaluating a student’s logical capacity, comprehension level and writing skill , some professors require their students to write a document presenting their ideas, thoughts, analyses, etc. about a certain topic. Other than writing an essay , the students can also use a report in order effectively present their objective deductions and findings.

A formal report is another way of presenting facts and analysis you have gathered from your readings about a certain topic. In requires thorough research, readings, rationalizing, analyzing and making a point. It goes beyond that of an essay, it is more than just arguing a position and drawing conclusions, although a report can also do that, it must comprehensively present pertinent facts and information in order for the reader to see the subject in new light.

As you may know, report writing is a very useful skill not only academically but also in your future career. Not only does it hones your writing skills it also improves your analytical and critical thinking skills since it urges you to come up with objective findings based on facts. Therefore, it will surely help you be good at whatever job you wish to pursue in the future; no employer says no to a critically and analytically adept individual. You may also see marketing report examples.

Academic Research Report Template

• Google Docs
• Apple Pages

Size: 31 KB

Academic Report Format Guide Example

Size: 168 KB

Difference Between an Essay and Report

An essay and a report are both effective ways of presenting information and data. However, some professors may prefer one over the other. In order to know the difference between the two, a list of their differences are presented below:

• Essay are rarely used outside the academic realm.
• It focuses on analyzing or evaluating theory, past research by other people, and ideas.
• Rarely presents the findings of a newly conducted research.
• It only has four significant parts or elements.
• The flow of writing is continuous and does not have dividing sections.
• It usually does not include table, charts, and/or diagrams.
• It should not be used as the method in arriving at conclusions.
• Is usually not reflective about the process of researching and writing the essay itself.
• It does not include recommendations.
• It is argumentative and mostly based on ideas.
• Only offers conclusions on a question or on presented issues or problems.

You may also see business report examples.

• Originated from the professional world but is still used academically.
• Often presents data and findings that the researcher himself has gathered.
• Uses data gathering methods such as surveys, experiment or case study, or by applying theory.
• Commonly has at least 12 parts or sections and 14 parts or sections at most.
• Topics are divided into different sections or headings or sub-headings.
• It usually contains tables, graphs, charts and diagrams.
• Includes the method/s the researcher used.
• It includes recommendations on what actions to make.
• It is an informative and fact-based document.
• Follows specific style for each section.
• It is written with a specific purpose and reader in mind.

You may also like examples of short report .

Management Decisions and Control Academic Report Example

Size: 170 KB

Digital Storytelling Academic Report Example

Size: 309 KB

Flood Mitigation and Water Storage Engineering Academic Report Example

Size: 201 KB

Contents of an Academic Report

An effective academic report must have the contents and sections necessary to nit-pick and through explain a subject. Listed below are the contents of an academic report:

• Author Declaration
• Abstract or Executive Summary
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Method or Methodology or Research Design
• Results or Findings
• Discussion of Results or Analysis or Interpretation
• Conclusions
• Recommendations
• References or Bibliography

How to Write an Academic Report

1. title page.

This means what it literally means. The title of the general report should be indicated on this page of the academic report. In some cases, the title page also includes your name as the author and student number, the name of the course and the course code. For example:

Communication Skills Relevant in International Business

John Smith (012345) Business 300

2. Author Declaration

In some universities or colleges, you will need to fill out a form from the department or faculty conforming that the report is in fact your own output. This form is attached to any assigned report or essay for your course.

3. Abstract or Executive Summary

An abstract is a short opening for your entire report. It is a basically a summary of the report as a whole and therefore should only be around 150 words in length. In order to effectively write it, a good techniques is writing it after all the sections, headings and sub-headings have been presented. Here’s a tip: write one or two sentences representing each section of the report in order to have a complete and comprehensive abstract.

4. Acknowledgements

Although acknowledgements are normally necessary in major reports, it can also be included in an academic report. This acknowledges the people who have supported you in your research and has contributed in the completion of the report. However, do not go overboard. This should only be short and direct to the point. You may also like consulting report examples.

6. Table of Contents

This is where the reader goes to look for specific sections or topics found in your report. This contains the actual titles of each section, heading and sub-headings along with their actual page numbers. A good way or organizing your table of contents is to list the contents in according to hierarchy numbers, from first to last. After the list of the contents comes a separate list for the tables, charts, diagrams, etc that is found in your report. You may also check out management report examples.

7. Introduction

The introduction must present the purpose or objective of the report and explain why the report is necessary or how it’s useful. It must immediately let the reader know that the report is useful in the field it is focused on and that it has a positive impact and recommendations on the subject at hand. In addition, you can define key terms you have repeatedly used in the report so that the reader has a clear idea on what you mean when you use the term. You might be interested in recruitment report examples.

Author’s Note : The following sections (8-11) are primarily used in major reports such as research, an experiment, survey or observation. If your report is based on reading, you can replace these sections with topic heading of your own choosing.

8. Literature Review

In this section, describe and report the previous and current thinking and research on the topic. You include a summary on what other have written about the topic you are reporting. This section will mostly consist of in-text citations from the books, articles, reports, etc. you have read about the topic. You may also see report examples in excel .

Simply, it is a review of all the literature you have read in order to form your own thinking about the topic. These literature are your basis for conducting your own report. The literature review should follow the format, MLA or APA format, you professor has required in citing your references.

9. Method or Methodology or Research Design

This section is all about the method or way you have gathered or collected your data. You present and tell your reader/s how were you able the data you have in your report. For example, you can describe the step-by-step process you did when you conducted an experiment or write a detailed description of a situation you have observed. In addition, in this section it is normal that you also have to explain why you collected the data through that method. An normally, the justification should also be quite detailed. You can include some in-text references to research methods references to help explain and justify your choice of method(s). You may also like monthly report examples & samples.

10. Results or Findings

Simply present the results or findings of your report in this section. There is no need for discussions, analysis and explanations of the results. Oftentimes, this section includes a table to comprehensively present the findings. Aside from that, this is also where you state whether you accept or reject the hypothesis or hypotheses you have made in you report. You may also check out sample activity reports .

11. Discussion of Results or Analysis or Interpretation

This is where you present what you think about the results you have formulated in your report. You can also include comment abut your results in this section. Here are other things the discussion section can include:

• Describing and suggesting reasons for any patterns in the results, possibly including anomalies (results that don’t ‘fit in with’ the rest).
• Explaining what you found (perhaps with reference to theory). You may also see performance report examples.
• Commenting on how much your findings agree or disagree with the literature.
• Considering the accuracy and reliability of your results (and how the methods you used might have affected that accuracy).
• Considering the implications of your results – what they might mean for your practice, for example. • Discussing what further research in this area might be useful in future. You may also like investigation report samples and examples.

12. Conclusions

In the conclusions, you should summarize the key findings of your report. Remember that all the information that you include in the conclusions should have been presented before and are new information. The conclusions should effectively summarize and present all the major points you have made so far in you report.

13. Recommendations

Recommendations are not necessarily needed in all academic reports, however, work-related and case studies should always present recommendations. These suggestions are for future actions in order to solve or improve issues or problems presented in the report. You may also check out free report examples & samples.

14. References or Bibliography

There should be a list on all the references you have used to cite and to back your claims. It should only contain all the literature you have cited in your report. Depending on the requirement, you can follow either an MLA or APA format for citation.

15. Appendices

Appendices contains all the supplementary information is ‘stored’. This could be table of data, copies of observation forms or notes, extracts from large documents, a transcript of a recording, etc. You might be interested in technical report examples & samples.

School Program Report Example

Size: 183 KB

New School Report Example

We hope you found our article on creating an academic report to be useful for your academic studies. We also included some examples which you can use as a reference/guide.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Generate a report on the impact of technology in the classroom on student learning outcomes

Prepare a report analyzing the trends in student participation in sports and arts programs over the last five years at your school.

How to Get the Best Recommendation Letters for Law School

Think through the references you will ask for letters and when and how you will approach them.

Good Law School Recommendation Letters

Getty Images

Make sure the person who writes your letter of recommendation is someone you have a good relationship with.

Although they are rarely decisive, recommendations letters are a meaningful factor in law school admissions.

Most other law school application materials, such as personal and diversity statements , present your case in your own voice. Recommendation letters are one of the few ways for admissions officers to hear others’ impressions of you.

While your transcript and test scores may say a lot about your academic skills, they don’t communicate what kind of person you are, or how you think or relate to other people. One student might get straight A's while acting like a pompous jerk, while another helped others, steadily improved through hard work or had the courage to take on challenging research.

Hearing stories about you from a professor or work supervisor helps law admissions officers build a three-dimensional picture of who you are and how you might contribute to the law school community.

This is why it is important to approach recommendation letters strategically, even though they’re just one part of your application process. 

Whom to Ask for a Recommendation Letter

Unless you are an older applicant who has been in the workforce for many years, you should get at least one law school recommendation letter from a professor. Others might come from other professors, mentors or supervisors from an internship, job or activity .

One mistake that applicants make is to request a recommendation letter from someone they think is a big shot – a well-known professor, a high-level executive or a family friend who is a venerable lawyer or local politician.

This is only a good idea if such a person teaches or works with you directly and can speak knowledgeably about your work and your goals. If your relationship is more indirect or distant, it can come across as superficial and uninformative, like a vague book blurb by a celebrity who seems unlikely to have read the book.

Above all, ensure the recommendation letter will be positive! If you detect signs that you have chosen the wrong reference to write a letter, move on to someone who can speak about your strengths more knowledgeably and enthusiastically. 

What a Recommendation Letter Should Include

If a recommendation letter is simply a series of compliments strung together, it will sound generic, no matter how effusive or truthful it is. An effective letter should back up its claims with specific details and examples of times when you stood out because of your dedication, helpfulness, initiative or insight.

A recommendation letter does not have to be unwaveringly positive. In fact, a letter that shows how you have grown, overcome adversity, responded constructively to feedback or taken responsibility for yourself can show the kinds of “ soft factors ” that law school admissions officers seek.  

How to Request a Recommendation Letter

Once you have identified a reference who is likely to write you a strong recommendation letter, ask him or her politely. Explain why you are applying to law school, why you think he or she would be a good reference and when you will need the letter.

Be prepared for the recommender to ask for your resume or other materials. For example, a professor might ask to see copies of your papers for the class, or any feedback received.

You might offer to provide more information or details as needed or to discuss the letter in a meeting or phone call. However, do not crowd your initial request with ideas and advice. That could come across as presumptuous.

If a recommender has a personal connection to a school you are applying to, consider requesting a school-specific letter , in addition to a more general recommendation letter.

Finally, avoid writing a recommendation letter yourself . If a recommender asks you to do so, gently explain why this is a bad idea and instead offer to provide ideas and notes that he or she could incorporate into his or her own letter. 

How Many Recommendation Letters to Request

Very few law schools require more than one recommendation letter. Many limit you to two, although some allow up to five.

It is important that all your recommendation letters are strong and substantive, because they may take time away from other aspects of your application. Quality matters more than quantity.

If you are worried that one of your letters is not as strong as the others, don’t submit it. A mediocre letter could very well overshadow better letters read alongside it. Just think about how often you read a mixed review that turns you off of a business, even if the other reviews seem positive. 

When to Request a Recommendation Letter

Recommendation letters are submitted and processed through the Credential Assembly Service of the Law School Admission Council. Since they can take a couple of weeks to process, it’s a good idea to get them in before you plan to apply.

Anticipate that your recommender may need at least a few weeks to write the letter, particularly at busy times of the year. That means that you should request recommendation letters more than a month before you plan to apply.

For applicants planning to apply in the fall, it is best to request letters over the summer or early fall. It’s OK to request letters earlier, as well. For example, if you just finished a summer internship where you worked together well with your boss, you might request the letter before leaving, even if you don’t plan to apply anytime soon. 

What if Your Recommendation Letter Is Delayed?

While law school admissions are rolling , a week or so of delay will not be of consequence. So, consider waiting until your application is complete before you submit it.

That said, if it is late in the cycle, or if you are aiming to meet an early decision deadline , waiting may not be an option. As long as you have the minimum number of recommendation letters required, your application can be submitted. You can always add further letters to your file later.

Remember that a law school is unlikely to review your application as soon as it is received. So, if a recommendation letter is delayed for a few days, it is unlikely to matter. If the letter is important and it may be delayed for some time, notify the admissions office by phone or email that another recommendation letter is forthcoming and ask if your application could be put on hold until it is received.

Of course, the best way to ensure that a recommendation letter does not hold up your application is to request it several weeks in advance. The law school admissions process is stressful enough without having to wait on other people!

Tips to Boost a Law School Application

Tags: law school , graduate schools , education , students

About Law Admissions Lowdown

Law Admissions Lowdown provides advice to prospective students about the law school application process, LSAT prep and potential career paths. Previously authored by contributors from Stratus Admissions Counseling, the blog is currently authored by Gabriel Kuris, founder of Top Law Coach , an admissions consultancy. Kuris is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has helped hundreds of applicants navigate the law school application process since 2003. Got a question? Email [email protected] .

Popular Stories

Paying for College

Applying to Graduate School

Best Colleges

Medical School Admissions Doctor

You May Also Like

How to choose a civil rights law school.

Anayat Durrani May 22, 2024

Avoid Procrastinating in Medical School

Kathleen Franco, M.D., M.S. May 21, 2024

Get Accepted to Multiple Top B-schools

Anayat Durrani May 16, 2024

Premeds and Emerging Medical Research

Zach Grimmett May 14, 2024

How to Get a Perfect Score on the LSAT

Gabriel Kuris May 13, 2024

Premeds Take 5 Public Health Courses

Rachel Rizal May 7, 2024

Fortune 500 CEOs With a Law Degree

Cole Claybourn May 7, 2024

Why It's Hard to Get Into Med School

A.R. Cabral May 6, 2024

Pros, Cons of Unaccredited Law Schools

Gabriel Kuris May 6, 2024

An MBA and Management Consulting

Sammy Allen May 2, 2024

Search what's trending...

• Entertainment
• Relationships
• Self Improvement

57 Sample Report Card Remarks for Preschool Students

Knowing how challenging it is to write preschool students’ report cards, here we are sharing the sample remarks for you. You are here because you seek some example comments to avoid making report cards standardized, Right? 

Worry not, with these sample remarks you can make every report card unique to students and helpful to their parents. Indeed, you should write every comment considering the individual performance. However, having these ideas can speed up the process of creating report cards.

Positive Comments for Report Cards for Preschool Students

Let’s start with some positive comments for the students who are doing great and improving from the past. From their academic performance to their behavior, their progress impressed you. With these positive comments, you encourage the students and also make the parents feel proud of their kids.

• Love his curiosity to learn more and learn something new outside of books. 
• I’m feeling so proud to see his growth over the last months. He’s getting better. 
• Keep working to improve. Always read more and learn more. 
• She is very committed to studying and so happy to see her progress over time. 
• I’m very impressed with his level of dedication and commitment to the study. 
• Truly appreciate the home training, she has a big influence on you. 
• Over the last year, she has outperformed every student in our class. Great work. 
• Comes to class on time and also completes every assignment on time. 
• Always follows class rules as well as asks the reasons to know things in detail. 
• Impressive performance compared to the last report. Seems like he worked so hard. 
• I can see that she become more focused and serious about learning at school. 

To help your student improve, there are more  positive comments for average students  for you.

Needs Improvement Remarks for Preschool Students

Of course, preschool students have a long way to go in learning. This is their growing phase and so as a good teacher, you should give constructive comments when needed. Here are sample preschool remarks you can try to update about the area of improvement. 

• Indeed, he is a brilliant student, but he needs to work more on his behavior. 
• Noticed that he faces challenges in understanding the basic concepts. 
• She needs to develop habits of reading every day at home. 
• He has trouble sharing his thoughts and ideas in front of the class. 
• A brilliant student just needs to pay more attention to improve his writing. 
• What I see here is she needs more practice in writing and grammar.
• Her performance is average so far. But I’m sure she can improve from here. 
• Shown consistency in his performance, and he can achieve more.
• Sometimes it’s hard for him to adjust to the other classmates. 
• It seems he is more interested in playing than in studying. 
• He needs to know how to get along with other kids. Sometimes, he’s so shy. 

Simple Report Card Remarks For Preschool Students

You want the parents and kids to relate to your feedback quite easily. So, be sure to make your remarks simple and direct. Whether they are performing great, average, or low, you can use these simple remarks to give feedback on preschool students’ performance. 

• He seems to enjoy studying here and gets along well with his peers. 
• Very obedient and punctual student. Alongside, he’s a supportive classmate. 
• She is very great at completing the homework and always ready to learn more. 
• Such an honest and trustworthy student in our class. 
• Always helps her classmates study and understand something. 
• He works well with his classmates and is more likely to believe in group work. 
• Good to see that he is now taking his education seriously. 
• He is getting better at every aspect of studying. Love to see his growth. 
• Certainly, she enjoys studying so much. She’s curious and very understandable. 
• I can see that he is teachable as he asks the right questions to understand something. 
• Continually showing progress in most subjects. Keep up the good practice. 
• Very participative in the classroom. Engages with everyone so greatly. 

Also read:  Best Remarks for Final Year Students

Quick Report Card Comments for Preschool

Creating report cards for preschool students is such a challenging job. You have a short time and many reports to create. Well, to manage your workload, you need some help there. Hopefully, these quick remarks to help you create your preschool report cards. 

• There is more to discuss. Better if we discuss that in a parent-teacher meeting . 
• He showed growth in many areas. Seems like he has started to enjoy studying. 
• I noticed that she is struggling in some subjects, but we can do something about it. 
• Faces difficulties in understanding the regular tasks. A home practice would help. 
• She is a brilliant student. But she has had to forget about the important things. 
• His shy nature is stopping him from opening up to other students in class. 
• Very supportive of his classmates and always helps them to learn something. 
• Never seen this level of concentration in any preschool students before. 
• If he pays attention to class, he can perform well. This is what stopped him. 
• She needs to work on her behavior in school. Often pick fights with others. 
• Love his enthusiasm, but he needs to give other students a chance to speak up. 

Short Report Card Remarks for Preschool Students

If you want to keep your report card remarks short, that shouldn’t be an issue. With some short but direct remarks, you can update parents about their kids’ progress. Check out these short report card comments that are perfect for creating preschool report cards. 

• Very cooperative to others and respectful to elders. 
• Follows every classroom and school rule. 
• Pay attention to every class and learn patiently. 
• Asks questions when needed. That’s a good thing. 
• More interested in taking the lead. 
• Expect to see more focus in class. 
• Supports his schoolmates to get things done. 
• Gives her best to achieve the expected results. 
• Very friendly with other students. 
• Makes other students feel comfortable.
• Such an obedient and clever student. 
• Respect his elders and support his peers. 

How to write report card comments for preschool?

You need to write report card comments based on the student’s performance in a particular subject. In the report card, you can mention their progress, improvement, and areas in which they are weak based on their performance. 

What are positive words for a preschool report card?

If you want your report card for preschool students more positive, consider using words like good, clever, punctual, smart, excellent and etc. Such words add positivity and encouragement to your report card comments.

What are some good remarks for a report card?

‘You did great this time’, ‘You have improved a lot’, ‘Seems like you practiced well’ and so on seem good because here you appreciate the students for their progress. There are more good remarks for clear ideas that you can find in this article. 

Also read:  Good Report Card Comments On Punctuality

Final Thoughts

Well, your remarks for preschool report cards are more than just comments, they have to be more like feedback. That should be positive when kids are doing well and also supportive when they need to improve. 

But overall the purpose of your feedback is to update the parents about the progress and performance of their kids in school. This article discussed the sample remarks that you can use while creating preschool students’ reports, you can get ideas from this. 

And yes, the best approach is still to follow a personalized approach to leave comments based on individual students’ performance either academically or personally.

Related posts:

• Binge Eating Disorder: When to Seek Help
• 5 Simple Sweet Ways to Spoil Your Man
• 37 Trending Spotify Playlists For Every Mood
• 71 Best Comments for WhatsApp Status to Get Instant Replies
• 241 Trending Marriage Hashtags to Make Your Memories Go Viral

11 Trending Books for Young Adults That Are Helpful and Entertaining

41 Sample Report Card Comments On Attendance And Punctuality

67 Sample Report Card Comments for Sports Activities And PE

76 Helpful Report Card Remarks for Final Term Students from Teacher

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Email Address

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Submit Comment

WPF Gallery Preview

This developer tool demonstrates wpf ( windows presentation framework ) controls and styles to a wpf application in .net 9 and onwards. wpf is a ui framework for building windows desktop applications. it supports a broad set of application development features, including an application model, resources, controls, graphics, layout, data binding and documents. to learn more about the wpf and how you can write your desktop application, visit: https://aka.ms/wpf the source code for this app is available on github: https://github.com/microsoft/wpf-samples, 5/17/2024 11:51:54 am.