what is a report template

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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.

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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!

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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]

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Guide to report writing formats with free templates

You've got something you’d like to formally share. Now make it official with our guide to report formats and how to write them and create your own.

Understanding report writing

A report is a representation of efforts connected to a specific goal or campaign that allows the speaker to show what they’ve done, why they’ve done it, and what rewards or conclusions were gleaned from those efforts. Whether composed for scholastic, professional, or personal reasons, reports can really get into the scope of a project and teach the intended audience about the effects and intentions connected to that project.

On a professional level, reports are typically used to present the results or progress connected to an employee or a department’s specific campaign. They are an essential tool for competent project management and assessing team goals. In a scholastic setting, reports can show off how a student has been performing during a particular period, or a student can write a report on something they have learned. Personally, you can use reports to showcase projects, travel logs, big life changes, and so much more.

Why write a report

Reports can accomplish quite a lot, especially when it comes to both presenting results and convincing your audience why your efforts have been necessary to achieve your goals. Not only can a sense of understanding be reached among teammates thanks to well-made reports, but collaboration and accountability are both encouraged as a part of the report-building process. Reports are also important for showcasing adaptability as a team member, especially when the results reported aren’t necessarily what the outcomes were expected to be.

Within your workplace, reports can benefit relevant stakeholders by educating them on what has been done thus far and what will be done in the future now that everyone is aware of how your labor manifests in results for your team. Supervisors can delegate more appropriately if they know how their employees are functioning based on departmental expectations laid out in such reports.

At school, students benefit from understanding the expectations their teachers have for their achievement. In turn, parents of students can better understand their children once they’ve witnessed reports on their performance — what’s been working, and what may be missing in assisting their child’s educational process.

For your own edification, reports can be essential in showing off what you’ve achieved on a personal level or what you’d like to be working on for yourself. They also are a thoughtful way to explain what you’ve been up to for your family, friends, and other community members.

Essential components for all report formats

No two reports are the same, especially considering the vast array of subject matter that could be displayed in this use case. However, the general professional format typically includes the following sections:

• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Findings/Results
• Analysis/Discussion
• Recommendations
• References/Bibliography

Different report writing formats

As already outlined above, there are many purposes that a report can fulfill, and thus, there are many types of reports one can develop. The following are examples of some of the most common and useful types of reports.

• Analytical report

• Progress report

• Academic report card

• Technical report

• Feasibility study report

• Annual report

Free report templates from Adobe Express

Use these free report templates to make reports your audience will find both attractive and informative. From school reports to annual performance reports, these templates will aid you in conveying key information, wowing your readers, and getting the job done quickly and easily.

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. 

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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.

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Analyze Report: How to Write the Best Analytical Report (+ 6 Examples!)

Varun Saharawat is a seasoned professional in the fields of SEO and content writing. With a profound knowledge of the intricate aspects of these disciplines, Varun has established himself as a valuable asset in the world of digital marketing and online content creation.

Organizations analyze reports to improve performance by identifying areas of strength and weakness, understanding customer needs and preferences, optimizing business processes, and making data-driven decisions!

Analyze Report: Picture a heap of bricks scattered on the ground. Individually, they lack purpose until meticulously assembled into a cohesive structure—a house, perhaps?

In the realm of business intelligence , data serves as the fundamental building material, with a well-crafted data analysis report serving as the ultimate desired outcome.

However, if you’ve ever attempted to harness collected data and transform it into an insightful report, you understand the inherent challenges. Bridging the gap between raw, unprocessed data and a coherent narrative capable of informing actionable strategies is no simple feat.

Table of Contents

What is an Analyze Report?

An analytical report serves as a crucial tool for stakeholders to make informed decisions and determine the most effective course of action. For instance, a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) might refer to a business executive analytical report to identify specific issues caused by the pandemic before adapting an existing marketing strategy.

Marketers often utilize business intelligence tools to generate these informative reports. They vary in layout, ranging from text-heavy documents (such as those created in Google Docs with screenshots or Excel spreadsheets) to visually engaging presentations.

A quick search on Google reveals that many marketers opt for text-heavy documents with a formal writing style, often featuring a table of contents on the first page. In some instances, such as the analytical report example provided below, these reports may consist of spreadsheets filled with numbers and screenshots, providing a comprehensive overview of the data.

Also Read: The Best Business Intelligence Software in 2024

How to Write an Analyze Report?

Writing an Analyze Report requires careful planning, data analysis , and clear communication of findings. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you write an effective analytical report:

Step 1: Define the Purpose:

• Clearly define the objective and purpose of the report. Determine what problem or question the report aims to address.
• Consider the audience for the report and what information they need to make informed decisions.

Step 2: Gather Data:

• Identify relevant sources of data that can provide insights into the topic.
• Collect data from primary sources (e.g., surveys, interviews) and secondary sources (e.g., research studies, industry reports).
• Ensure that the data collected is accurate, reliable, and up-to-date.

Step 3: Analyze the Data:

• Use analytical tools and techniques to analyze the data effectively. This may include statistical analysis, qualitative coding, or data visualization.
• Look for patterns, trends, correlations, and outliers in the data that may provide insights into the topic.
• Consider the context in which the data was collected and any limitations that may affect the analysis.

Step 4: Organize the Information:

• Structure the report in a logical and coherent manner. Divide the report into sections, such as an introduction, methodology, findings, analysis, and conclusion.
• Ensure that each section flows logically into the next and that there is a clear progression of ideas throughout the report.

Step 5: Write the Introduction:

• Start with an introduction that provides background information on the topic and outlines the scope of the report.
• Clearly state the purpose and objectives of the analysis.
• Provide context for the analysis and explain why it is relevant and important.

Step 6: Present the Methodology:

• Describe the methods and techniques used to gather and analyze the data.
• Explain any assumptions made and the rationale behind your approach.
• Provide sufficient detail so that the reader can understand how the analysis was conducted.

Step 7: Present the Findings:

• Present the findings of your analysis in a clear and concise manner.
• Use charts, graphs, tables, and other visual aids to illustrate key points and make the data easier to understand.
• Provide context for the findings and explain their significance.

Step 8: Analyze the Data:

• Interpret the findings and analyze their implications.
• Discuss any patterns, trends, or insights uncovered by the analysis and explain their significance.
• Consider alternative explanations or interpretations of the data.

Step 9: Draw Conclusions:

• Draw conclusions based on the analysis and findings.
• Summarize the main points and insights of the report.
• Reiterate the key takeaways and their implications for decision-making.

Step 10: Make Recommendations:

• Finally, make recommendations based on your conclusions.
• Suggest actionable steps that can be taken to address any issues identified or capitalize on any opportunities uncovered by the analysis.
• Provide specific, practical recommendations that are feasible and aligned with the objectives of the report.

Step 11: Proofread and Revise:

• Review the report for accuracy, clarity, and coherence.
• Ensure that the writing is clear, concise, and free of errors.
• Make any necessary revisions before finalizing the report.

Step 12: Write the Executive Summary:

• Write a brief executive summary that provides an overview of the report’s key findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
• This summary should be concise and easy to understand for busy stakeholders who may not have time to read the entire report.
• Include only the most important information and avoid unnecessary details.

By following these steps, you can write an analytical report that effectively communicates your findings and insights to your audience.

Also Read: Analytics For BI: What is Business Intelligence and Analytics?

Analyze Report Examples

Analyze Report play a crucial role in providing valuable insights to businesses, enabling informed decision-making and strategic planning. Here are some examples of analytical reports along with detailed descriptions:

1) Executive Report Template:

An executive report serves as a comprehensive overview of a company’s performance, specifically tailored for C-suite executives. This report typically includes key metrics and KPIs that provide insights into the organization’s financial health and operational efficiency. For example, the Highlights tab may showcase total revenue for a specific period, along with the breakdown of transactions and associated costs. 

Additionally, the report may feature visualizations such as cost vs. revenue comparison charts, allowing executives to quickly identify trends and make data-driven decisions. With easy-to-understand graphs and charts, executives can expedite decision-making processes and adapt business strategies for effective cost containment and revenue growth.

2) Digital Marketing Report Template:

In today’s digital age, businesses rely heavily on digital marketing channels to reach their target audience and drive engagement. A digital marketing report provides insights into the performance of various marketing channels and campaigns, helping businesses optimize their marketing strategies for maximum impact. 

This report typically includes key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and ROI for each marketing channel. By analyzing these KPIs, businesses can identify their best-performing channels and allocate resources accordingly. For example, the report may reveal that certain channels, such as social media or email marketing, yield higher response rates than others. Armed with this information, businesses can refine their digital marketing efforts to enhance the user experience, attract more customers, and ultimately drive growth.

3) Sales Performance Report:

A sales performance report provides a detailed analysis of sales activities, including revenue generated, sales volume, customer acquisition, and sales team performance. This report typically includes visualizations such as sales trend charts, pipeline analysis, and territory-wise sales comparisons. By analyzing these metrics, sales managers can identify top-performing products or services, track sales targets, and identify areas for improvement.

4) Customer Satisfaction Report:

A customer satisfaction report evaluates customer feedback and sentiment to measure overall satisfaction levels with products or services. This report may include metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer survey results, and customer support ticket data. By analyzing these metrics, businesses can identify areas where they excel and areas where they need to improve to enhance the overall customer experience.

5) Financial Performance Report:

A financial performance report provides an in-depth analysis of an organization’s financial health, including revenue, expenses, profitability, and cash flow. This report may include financial ratios, trend analysis, and variance reports to assess performance against budgeted targets or industry benchmarks. By analyzing these metrics, financial managers can identify areas of strength and weakness and make strategic decisions to improve financial performance .

6) Inventory Management Report:

An inventory management report tracks inventory levels, turnover rates, stockouts, and inventory costs to optimize inventory management processes. This report may include metrics such as inventory turnover ratio, carrying costs, and stock-to-sales ratios. By analyzing these metrics, inventory managers can ensure optimal inventory levels, minimize stockouts, and reduce carrying costs to improve overall operational efficiency.

7) Employee Performance Report:

An employee performance report evaluates individual and team performance based on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales targets, customer satisfaction scores, productivity metrics, and attendance records. This report may include visualizations such as performance scorecards, heatmaps, and trend analysis charts to identify top performers, areas for improvement, and training needs.

Also Check: Analytics & Insights: The Difference Between Data, Analytics, and Insights

Why are Analyze Report Important?

Analyze Report are important for several reasons:

• Informed Decision Making: Analytical reports provide valuable insights and data-driven analysis that enable businesses to make informed decisions. By presenting relevant information in a structured format, these reports help stakeholders understand trends, identify patterns, and evaluate potential courses of action.
• Problem Solving: Analytical reports help organizations identify and address challenges or issues within their operations. Whether it’s identifying inefficiencies in processes, addressing customer complaints, or mitigating risks, these reports provide a framework for problem-solving and decision-making.
• Business Opportunities: Analytical reports can uncover new business opportunities by analyzing market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activities. By identifying emerging trends or unmet customer needs, businesses can capitalize on opportunities for growth and innovation.
• Performance Evaluation: Analytical reports are instrumental in evaluating the performance of various aspects of a business, such as sales, marketing campaigns, and financial metrics. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, organizations can assess their progress towards goals and objectives.
• Accountability and Transparency: Analytical reports promote accountability and transparency within an organization by providing objective data and analysis. By sharing insights and findings with stakeholders, businesses can foster trust and confidence in their decision-making processes.

Overall, analytical reports serve as valuable tools for businesses to gain insights, solve problems, identify opportunities, evaluate performance, and enhance decision-making processes.

Types of Analyze Report

• Financial Analyze Report: These reports analyze the financial performance of an organization, including revenue, expenses, profitability, and cash flow. They help stakeholders understand the financial health of the business and make informed decisions about investments, budgeting, and strategic planning.
• Market Research Reports: Market research reports analyze market trends, consumer behavior, competitive landscape, and other factors affecting a particular industry or market segment. They provide valuable insights for businesses looking to launch new products, enter new markets, or refine their marketing strategies .
• Performance Analysis Reports: These reports evaluate the performance of various aspects of an organization, such as sales performance, operational efficiency, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction. They help identify areas of improvement and inform decision-making to enhance overall performance.
• Risk Assessment Reports: Risk assessment reports analyze potential risks and vulnerabilities within an organization, such as financial risks, operational risks, cybersecurity risks, and regulatory compliance risks. They help stakeholders understand and mitigate risks to protect the organization’s assets and reputation.
• SWOT Analysis Reports: SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis reports assess the internal strengths and weaknesses of an organization, as well as external opportunities and threats in the business environment. They provide a comprehensive overview of the organization’s strategic position and guide decision-making.
• Customer Analysis Reports: Customer analysis reports examine customer demographics, purchasing behavior, satisfaction levels, and preferences. They help businesses understand their target audience better, tailor products and services to meet customer needs, and improve customer retention and loyalty.
• Operational Efficiency Reports: These reports evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of operational processes within an organization, such as production, logistics, and supply chain management. They identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement to optimize operations and reduce costs.
• Compliance and Regulatory Reports: Compliance and regulatory reports assess an organization’s adherence to industry regulations, legal requirements, and internal policies. They ensure that the organization operates ethically and legally, mitigating the risk of fines, penalties, and reputational damage.

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Analyze Report FAQs

What is an analytical report.

An analytical report is a document that presents data, analysis, and insights on a specific topic or problem. It provides a detailed examination of information to support decision-making and problem-solving within an organization.

Why are analytical reports important?

Analytical reports are important because they help organizations make informed decisions, solve problems, and identify opportunities for improvement. By analyzing data and providing insights, these reports enable stakeholders to understand trends, patterns, and relationships within their business operations.

What types of data are typically included in analytical reports?

Analytical reports may include various types of data, such as financial data, sales data, customer feedback, market research, and operational metrics. The specific data included depends on the purpose of the report and the information needed to address the topic or problem being analyzed.

How are analytical reports different from other types of reports?

Analytical reports differ from other types of reports, such as descriptive reports or summary reports, in that they go beyond presenting raw data or summarizing information. Instead, analytical reports analyze data in-depth, draw conclusions, and provide recommendations based on the analysis.

What are the key components of an analytical report?

Key components of an analytical report typically include an introduction, methodology, findings, analysis, conclusions, and recommendations. The introduction provides background information on the topic, the methodology outlines the approach used to analyze the data, the findings present the results of the analysis, the analysis interprets the findings, and the conclusions and recommendations offer insights and actionable steps.

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Accelerate Your Business Performance With Modern IT Reports

Table of Contents

1) What Is An IT Report?

2) Why Do You Need An IT Report?

3) What Are The Advantages of IT Reporting?

4) IT Report Templates

5) Best Practices In IT Reporting

6) What To Look For In IT Reporting Software

7) IT Reporting Mistakes To Avoid

8) Real-life Applications IT Dashboard Reporting

In the modern age, your IT department is a part of your business’s core nerve center. Without it, your organization would fall apart pretty quickly.

But, akin to many other industries, the information technology sector faces the age-old issue of producing IT reports that boost success by helping to maximize value from a tidal wave of digital data. While integral to organizational success and development, IT reporting could be considered a fruitless exercise without the ability to gain actionable insights from your most important insights.

As head of IT, you may have heard the question, “How many support tickets did we get that month? And how fast were they resolved?” Without the capacity to answer such questions, your ability to support your IT department successfully will be hindered.

But in this digital age, dynamic modern IT reports created with a state-of-the-art online reporting tool are here to help you provide viable answers to a host of burning departmental questions. The IT management report of today will help you make more informed, more powerful decisions, do your job effectively, and develop exciting new growth strategies.

To put the power of digital data reporting into perspective, we’ll explore the role of IT reports, its numerous benefits, and a mix of real-life examples.

Let’s get started!

What Is An IT Report?

An IT report compiles an ensemble of IT KPIs tracked over a certain period to assess various situations related to project management, helpdesk issues such as ticket status and their resolution, or more financial-focused costs and revenue stats, among others.

Regardless of their nature, they deliver value to their readers and are supposedly impactful. They have to align with the company’s strategic objectives and priorities. Therefore, their realization needs to be thought out. The purpose is not to track every statistic possible, as you risk being drowned in data and losing focus.

By understanding your core business goals and selecting the right key performance indicator ( KPI ) and metrics for your specific needs, you can use an information technology report sample to visualize your most valuable metrics at a glance, developing initiatives and making pivotal decisions swiftly and confidently. Using a modern dashboard creator , each report is easily visualized and provides advanced interactivity possibilities to explore and generate insights.

Information technology reports are the interactive eyes that help your department run more smoothly, cohesively, and successfully. They are powerful tools that serve different purposes and analytical scenarios in the IT department. Below, you’ll find the most common types of IT reports. 

• Device Report: Also known as endpoint report, it provides insights into the performance of all machines working in the company. It is an important report as it helps discover, monitor, and troubleshoot all devices to ensure everything works as it should. For big corporations with many employees and devices, tracking this data and maximizing performance is of utmost importance. 
• Downtime Report: One of the most critical tasks the IT department needs to take care of is ensuring systems are running smoothly. This means identifying and solving any downtime, including website outages, network failure, and CRM downtime, among others. The downtime report provides the necessary knowledge to understand these issues, their effect on the business, how long it took to identify and solve them, and the next steps. In time, tracking this data will also help IT to identify recurring issues and implement preventive measures. 
• IT Backlog Report : The word “backlog” refers to accumulated or uncompleted work. In IT, it refers to a high number of service tickets being opened or unresolved. This can indicate several things, including inefficiencies in ticket management or a lack of employees to cover the demand. A backlog report is a great tool to find the reasons behind it and implement corrective measures. It helps the IT department to rectify bottlenecks and ensure every employee or user is getting the help they need.     
• Security Report: Security is one of the most pressing issues for businesses of all sizes today. As the number of attacks and breaches increases, the need to implement and evaluate security measures is fundamental. That is the value of a security report. These tools provide a 360-view into all aspects related to cybersecurity, from common threats to time to detection and repair, phishing tests, and much more. They can also include predictive data to forecast and tackle an attack immediately. 
• Costs Report: IT needs to account for a budget like any area or department. The costs report details all expenses and costs from direct IT operations and valuable insights for cost optimization and resource allocation. It shows areas that could be improved to make the department financially efficient. 

These are just a few of the many types of IT reports businesses use daily. We will see some of these types in the examples section of the post, but first, we will look at why you need them. 

Why Do You Need An IT Report?

When setting up a business strategy for your IT department, you need to craft a vision, identify goals to achieve, and a clear path to getting there. IT reports are here to help you demonstrate at each stage of the way you stand and demonstrate the progress (or decline) accomplished so far – and the effect you have on that progress.

This is why it is highly important to report correctly. If your reporting does not align with the wider business objectives, you might drive the IT department – and sometimes even the rest of the business – further apart. Bad reports can also endanger the budget initially settled.

What Are The Advantages of IT Reporting?

IT reporting has many benefits. Not only does it let you assess the current state of activities to find out what is happening and where, but it also provides proof of it happening. Using IT analytics software is extremely useful in the matter: by gathering all your info in a single point of truth, you can easily analyze everything at once and create actionable IT dashboards . Thanks to their in-the-moment nature, you don’t need to struggle with permanent synchronization: all your data is always up-to-date. That is a considerable asset to understand easily the bits and bytes of your activity and turn those insights into informed business decisions.

IT dashboards, visualized through a professional online dashboard , come in handy because they give an idea of the current situation in a glimpse. Just like you would answer “I am a bit stressed” or “tired but happy” to someone asking how you feel, without giving them the blow-by-blow account of everything that happened throughout the week, a report gives a snapshot of the activities. It is a highly effective communication tool to grasp your team’s performance or collaborate with coworkers.

To drive home the message of why you need an interactive IT report template and digital dashboard solutions for your technical departments, here is a concise summary of the business-boosting benefits:

1. Improved decision-making: The intuitive visual nature of digital reports fosters swifter, more informed decision-making across all key aspects of your IT department. Not only will you be able to make better senior choices relating to your department, but by empowering other team members to analyze and drill down into important metrics and insights with ease, you will accelerate your success significantly.

2. Inclusivity: Expanding on decision-making, as these kinds of dashboards and reports serve up digestible data visualizations, members of your IT department will be able to use these solutions with ease, even under pressure . The graphical nature of such dashboards will also make it easy for you and your IT personnel to share insights with other departments effectively without any key data getting lost in translation .

3. Agility: As every modern IT report template is fully customizable and offers access to every insight, online data visualization , or KPI from a centralized location across many mobile devices, it’s possible to gain access to invaluable IT-based knowledge 24/7. As the IT department is the lifeblood of any modern organization, this level of agile access to key insights will increase productivity and increase response times to unforeseen issues or technical problems.

4. Better business intelligence (BI): By accessing past, real-time, and predictive data with modern BI tools , you will enhance your IT department’s business intelligence capabilities ten-fold – pushing you ahead of the pack in the process. These kinds of informational hubs are designed for growth and evolution, and by embracing them, you will be able to make your IT department stronger than you ever thought possible.

5. Improved productivity and accuracy: In business, it's critical to provide the right knowledge at the right time. Whether it's ad hoc reporting in question or strategical analysis and development, the team needs to have access to the right insights at any time. By utilizing advanced reports for IT processes, each team member can have access to data and immediately ask questions, share their findings, and create their own analysis. Moreover, by automating the delivery of insights on specific days of the week or month, productivity increases, and professionals can shift their focus from report creation to actionable insights.

6. Lower costs: Businesses need to lower their costs as much as possible, and by creating an IT service report template, you can easily adjust each metric presented and use it for any of your future reports. This will enable you to save time and, consequently, costs that would otherwise be lost in endless static reports and outdated information. Speed is critical, and modern solutions help to centralize all the data on a single point of access.

7. Confidence: Running an IT department is no easy feat. There are countless things to consider on a daily basis, not to mention long-term initiatives to focus on. With a modern tech report, you can take charge of your insights and improve departmental communication. In turn, this will give you greater direction, aptitude, and confidence.

IT Report Templates And Examples

As mentioned, technical-style reports are composed of a collection of KPIs aimed at analyzing specific parts of the IT department’s activities. Once you have defined what you want to measure, you can select the appropriate metrics and visualize them with an effective dashboard design .

These five IT report examples and their associated key performance indicators put the power of IT-based dashboards into a practical perspective.

Let’s start with our issue management IT report sample.

1. IT Issue Management Dashboard

This first template deals with technical issue management and is especially useful for IT leaders.

**click to enlarge**

This particular example indeed provides an overview of the overall problems happening in your system and lets everyone know what is happening and how often. The report displays the performance of 3 servers and tracks several metrics:

• the up- and downtime are expressed as a percentage and in minutes
• the types of issues that occurred, the downtime they provoked, and the effort needed to repair them
• the number of support employees per thousand end-users
• the percentages of unsolved tickets per support agent

These metrics will help identify whether the issues are effectively managed and if the technical performance is on track. The point is to keep the system performance well maintained, and such an IT operations report template can certainly help in the process. If you spot inefficiencies and higher numbers of issues, for example, from the DNS perspective or hardware failure, you need to look closely at what happened and why. Another critical point is to look for the IT help employee per thousand end-users consistently since it will directly show whether your team needs additional assistance and if hiring new candidates makes sense.

Our next dashboard has a different IT focus, and that's related to costs.

2. IT Cost Dashboard

The second of our IT report examples tackles the financial management of the IT department.

That is a crucial source of knowledge for decision-making as it provides top management and the financial department with accurate data on how the resources are used, for what, in which quantity, and the profit that you manage to make out of it all. It is split into four different KPIs:

• the return on investment (ROI) over a year, expressing the efficiency of IT investments
• a comparison of the IT spending versus its budget
• a breakdown of all the different costs involved in the management of the department
• a comparison of the costs and the revenue generated

These KPIs show a cost-related IT story and can provide you with building blocks for optimizing the current cost management. You can see that the ROI is generally great (more than 150%), and it steadily rises over time, which is the goal of every successful cost management strategy. By monitoring each of these cost-related metrics with the help of online data analysis , everyone in the IT team, finance department, and management can immediately look at the monetary effectiveness of IT projects. That way, potential issues are immediately identified and resolved. For example, if you spot higher costs in your hardware or software section, you can easily investigate what happened and brainstorm ideas to reduce each cost as much as possible. Keep in mind optimizing based on business requirements, but don't cut if there is no need for it or if it will affect the functioning of the IT department.

Our next report details project management, critical in modern, technologically-driven companies.

3. IT Project Management Dashboard

Our third report template (excellent for use as an IT department monthly report sample) is an excellent asset when you need the right overview of your IT projects to supervise several activities at once.

It tracks every task necessary to carry out your project, its evolution, where you stand at the moment, and what is delayed or needs action. With this IT report example, you can find:

• the total project budget compared to what has already been used and what is left
• the overdue tasks, the time delayed, their original deadline, and the employee responsible for the task
• the workload on each employee’s shoulders, directly affecting their capacity to deliver a task on time
• the upcoming deadlines: who is in charge, what type of task, its deadline, and the workload percentage

This type of project management dashboard is specifically developed to accommodate many different IT-related tasks to deliver a successful project. A clear overview of the planning, design, development, and testing alongside the projected launch date will clearly show the stage where the team works and what kind of tasks and deadlines are overdue or upcoming. The project budget and the workload show a clear overview of the total budget, remaining, and who in the team has time to take on additional tasks and insights into the general organization. These kinds of business intelligence solutions help in optimizing metrics and automating many of the reporting processes. For example, you may notice that the workload of one team member is lower, and you have the space to assign to him/her some overdue tasks that have a higher urgency level.

Our next template goes into strategic monitoring and development, useful for modern CTOs and CIOs.

4. CTO Report Template

Information technology reports for high-level executives have to include strategic planning and development for a longer period. CTOs have the task of managing multiple IT-related touchpoints and ensuring that internal and external technological areas are aligned and have the potential to grow. That's why creating a report is critical in order to manage and deliver that same growth. Here, we will present an IT monthly report template specifically designed for C-level management.

You can immediately spot 4 focal points that CTOs have on their radar: the learning, internal, finance/customers, and user metrics crucial for strategic progress. The learning part is developed with the ticketing system and bug issues in mind, as well as steady development and comparison with the previous month. Since the color-coding clearly shows whether there are issues or not (green indicating positive development while red indicates that the metric needs attention), the CTO can assess the situation and dig deeper into the operational level of certain metrics.

On the right side, the internal area is delivering metrics on internal processes and how well the team manages the time between failures, repair, availability, downtime, and accuracy of estimates. In this case, you can see that there are certain matters that need adjustments to keep the repairs and failures at a minimum.

The bottom of this monthly IT report template for management demonstrates the financial and customer-relevant metrics such as the percentage of IT expenses, per employee, service expenses, business system use, and net promoter score. These key performance indicators show the relationship between financial performance and whether customers are satisfied with the delivered service. If any of these metrics should change in a negative way, the CTO has to investigate why because it can directly affect the business. This dashboard can also be used as a CIO report template. The point is to adjust as needed and let the BI dashboard software do the hard work.

5. Cyber Security Dashboard

Last but certainly not least, in our information technology report sample list, we come to our cyber security dashboard. Considering that cyber security breaches cost the global economy trillions of dollars every year, fortifying your business from potential breaches or attacks is vital. 

Cohesive and highly visual, this essential IT report template is armed with a wealth of metrics designed to track and monitor a multitude of breaches, as well as internal response or resolution times.

By working with this BI reporting tool regularly, you will gain a vivid view of your company’s current cyber security prevention processes while gaining a greater understanding of all potential threat sources.

If you see phishing attempts rise over time, for example, you can develop a targeted strategy to provide comprehensive staff training while fortifying touchpoints, including your customer inquiry hub or email inboxes.

This dynamic dashboard offers all you need to:

• Track and benchmark your overall cyber security rating
• Get to grips with how frequently cyber intrusions occur across the business
• Understand how consistently and swiftly you detect potential breaches across the board
• Learn how often you back up and protect sensitive company data
• Monitor, measure, and improve your phishing test success rates

This melting pot of knowledge will give you the insight you need to nip potential threats in the bud before they cause organizational devastation while optimizing every aspect of your business’s breach-prevention initiatives. This is an essential IT report format in today’s hyper-connected digital age.

In the next part of the article, we will focus on best practices so you can start building reports on your own.

Best Practices In IT Reporting

To avoid drowning in data and losing focus of what really matters, you need to ask yourself these questions before embarking on your IT reporting journey:

• Who are my reporting efforts aimed at?
• What kind of metrics matter to my audience?
• What is the strategy behind this report: typical daily management activities or a goal-oriented, strategic assessment of the current situation (assets, resources, etc.)?

Once you’ve taken measures to understand your core departmental goals and your general strategy and considered your audience, you can start creating your report. Here are the best practices to consider:

1. Select the right KPIs: When it comes to creating an effective IT management report, selecting the best key performance indicators for the job is essential. If you’ve considered your departmental goals, aims, and objectives as well as your audience, making the right choices should be relatively straightforward. A digital data dashboard that reports KPIs is interactive and visual, and by working with metrics that align with your goals, you’ll ensure you build your IT report sample on steady foundations.

2. Avoid duplication: When it comes to collecting important metrics, there is most likely a wide range of databases set up to gather information based on different aspects of your IT-based activities. A best practice is to keep everything as simple as possible and not duplicate data too much, even when an overlap seems inevitable. When the variation and volume of data increase, so does the complexity, the effort required, and the general level of frustration.

3. Quality over quantity: Data quality is an essential part of reporting, particularly when it comes to IT. The outcomes of your reports are important, strategic decisions and, thus, should not be based on false or failing information. Make data quality management an imperative matter of your reporting journey, and catch the data quality issues as early as possible.

4. Collaborate with the team: Collaborating with your team is essential. Working together on a report will bring out more than if only one brain was on it. Communicate your findings and see what they have analyzed and dug out from the analytics. With the help of self-service BI , it is easily feasible, and several people can have access to the same source of knowledge and work.

5. Utilize templates: As you build your processes and collaborate with others, you can utilize pre-built templates to make creating your reports much easier and faster. Some solutions offer many templates, and you can easily pick one, adjust it based on your parameters and metrics, and the dashboard is done. This will also help you become faster in your reporting process, especially if you automate and deliver the report each week or month. That brings us to our next point.

6. Automate as much as possible: Last but certainly not least, automation is becoming increasingly important in our cutthroat environment. Automating as much as possible is critical, especially when deadlines are in question and projects must be delivered on time. In that case, the whole organization can profit from having reports delivered on a special weekday or month, as we mentioned, fully automated with established operational or strategic metrics.

7. Define a reporting schedule: While automation allows you to schedule reports to be generated and sent on specific dates, it is of utmost importance to plan and define a clear schedule beforehand. As you learned earlier in the post, there are many types of IT reports, each valuable in a different time frame. While a cost report must be generated every quarter or year, a cybersecurity report must be generated daily. Therefore, clearly understanding schedules will help you stay organized and prioritize tasks that need more attention. 

8. Share on multiple devices: Similar to our collaboration point, sharing through multiple devices is also critical since things can go wrong in seconds, and if you're not sitting at your desktop computer, the project or any IT-related task can go seriously wrong. That's why having access to your reports on multiple devices, such as mobile or tablet, can help avoid issues and enable you to answer any question that might arise immediately.

9. Stay compliant: As we migrate to an increasingly digital existence, rules and regulations around data protection are becoming more and more stringent. As a modern business, remaining compliant is critical. That’s why when it comes to IT, no departmental stone should be left unturned. By working with compliance dashboards, you will remain on the right side of the red tape at all times, preserving your organizational integrity in the process. These powerful IT reports will provide the means you need to streamline and secure your informational collection efforts in line with regulations like the GDPA and CCPA.

10. Define roles and responsibilities: Expanding on the point above, in order to stay compliant with regulations and security standards, it is important to define roles and responsibilities regarding the use of data. This means ensuring that only authorized people have access to IT reports and that the access is granted through top-notch security controls. This way, if any issues occur, it will be clear who is responsible. Defining clear roles and responsibilities is a key step in implementing a successful data governance plan, which aims to ensure a secure and compliant use of corporate data. 

11. Real-time data: Another best practice is working with real-time insights. In addition to using an IT department report template with historical and predictive metrics, tracking real-time or “in the moment” information across your most vital activities is essential to remaining responsive and effective. By monitoring real-time trends and patterns, you will improve your decision-making while stopping any potential issues before they snowball. Essentially, using real-time visuals to your departmental advantage will help you accurately monitor system health and keep the entire organization safe, secure, cohesive, and communicative.

12. Intelligence alerts and alarms: Setting up automated real-time data alerts will ensure you never miss an irregularity in your IT metrics (this will give you the means you need to take control of any situation, any time, and anywhere). With intelligent alerts and alarms, you can set parameters based on your specific organizational needs. For instance, you could set up a cyber breach alert that will activate when your system flags a spike in cyber attack attempts. As soon as the alarm or alert is triggered, you can get to the heart of the issue straight away while formulating strategies to improve your internal cyber breach prevention efforts.

13. Use interactive filters: To make your IT information easier to access and explore, applying interactive dashboard filters is the way forward. Working with both drill down and drill through filters will help you cut to the informational chase when necessary. Applying interactive filters will help you hone in on very specific informational pockets or info-driven trends and, ultimately, provide a more consistent service while significantly improving your strategic decision-making.

IT Reporting Mistakes To Avoid

Now that you’re up to speed with IT issues reports and dashboard analytics best practices, we will explore the mistakes you should avoid at all costs. Steer clear of these common errors, and you will ensure consistent success across the board.

• Not cleaning the data

As an IT department, you will have access to an almost infinite stream of information. But without cleaning and curating these rafts of data, you will unlikely ever connect with any useful insights. Analyzing high-quality, relevant insights is critical to operate seamlessly and securely while managing a constant barrage of helpdesk tickets.

Many IT decision-makers fail to examine their informational sources while working with dashboard software and fall into a rabbit hole of sloppy, poorly placed misinformation. To avoid wasting your resources or working with droves of data that could even harm your decision-making, you must try to clean your raw information and omit all redundant insights or sources before consolidating anything into your report.

•   Not creating backups

Another common (and fairly devastating) IT analytics mistake in the modern age is overlooking the importance of creating informational backups. If you don’t back up every strand of relevant information, you could lose it. The impact of losing information or strategic information can be great, with untold departmental resources or money wasted on clawing the department's informational initiatives back to square one. With this in mind, you must make backing up your assets and any information or insights a hard-wired part of your daily duties or practices.

• Not relying on a cloud environment

Without tapping into the potential of the cloud, you will limit your potential as an IT department. Working within a cloud-based environment will ensure everyone has greater access to the essential dashboards, metrics, and insights they need at all times. Plus, your assets will remain safe, secure, and compliant.

Cloud-based environments are also more responsive, allowing you more flexibility when it comes to carrying out analytical tasks and strategic activities. Conversely, ignoring the cloud will leave your organization vulnerable while significantly stunting your service levels and overall efficiency.

• Not following IT trends

Another big mistake IT operatives make regarding report-based initiatives is failing to keep their finger on the pulse. If you don’t follow the latest analytical-style trends in your sector, you will fall behind the pack, and the business will suffer. Keeping on top of trends will empower you to move with constant change while keeping every pocket of your IT strategy primed for success.

• Narrowing your scope

While cleaning, curating, and cropping your information is 100% essential, it’s also worth noting that only working with a small cross-section of insights is a mistake. In an IT department, juggling several plates is a big part of the job. That said, if you only work with issue dashboard insights or project management insights, the department will begin to suffer (you’ll be thriving in one area and suffering in another).

But by cleaning your insights from the offset and working with a balanced mix of insights (like those covered in our five IT support report template examples), you will remain balanced, cohesive, and effective 24/7.

In the next part of the article, we will focus on real use-cases, where professionals can utilize the power of reporting IT metrics.

What Should You Look For In IT Reporting Software

As you’ve learned by now, modern IT reports are powerful tools that help ensure your systems and data are managed in an efficient, secure, and cost-effective manner. To do so effectively, IT departments need to rely on software and technologies to make the most out of the process. Long gone are the days of manually gathering data and generating written reports. In today’s data-driven world, the reporting process has mutated into an automated environment where reports are generated in a matter of seconds and updated in real time. Leaving enough time to focus on other important tasks. 

But, with so much competition and software availability, how do you ensure you invest in the right solution for your business? For starters, you should think about a solution that meets your goals and is adaptable, meaning it will grow as your company grows. Look out for innovative features and technologies that can help boost your strategies and uncover the hidden potential behind your data. Avoid outdated desktop tools and prioritize a self-service cloud environment to take your data everywhere. 

To help you make the smartest decision, below we will discuss five features any IT reporting software worth its salt should offer. 

• Customization: In an IT environment, there is no one-size-fits-all report. Each business or client has its own system with its own set of rules and requirements. Therefore, a fundamental feature that an IT reporting software should offer is customization. IT analytics tools, such as datapine, offer white-labeling capabilities that allow users to customize the entire look and feel of the report, meaning they can add the company’s or client’s logo, font, color palette, and specific KPIs. This not only gives the report a more professional look but also makes it more efficient and targeted to specific needs. 
• Sharing capabilities: The basis of a successful data-driven company lies in collaboration. In order for the IT team to perform its activities correctly and cohesively, they need to be able to share reports and use them to collaborate. For that reason, the tool you choose should offer a range of sharing options, including a password-protected URL, automated emails, and different exporting options. At datapine, reports can be easily shared with user roles assigned to ensure only the right people can access the data. 
• Automated reports : The IT department has been handling companies' analytics requirements for decades. This usually takes a lot of time and manual work, which can also be subject to error. While most businesses today rely on self-service tools to let each department generate its own reports, many others still rely on the IT department for the process. Taking that into account, investing in a tool that offers automation features is of utmost importance. Modern IT reporting systems offer the possibility to automatically generate reports in a matter of seconds, eliminating tons of manual work and the risk of human error. 
• Real-time reporting: In today’s fast-paced environment, businesses that want to stay ahead of their competitors must make decisions with agility. This is especially true in IT, where systems and devices must be monitored at all times to ensure no issues can affect the company’s daily operations. That is where real-time reporting comes in. Having the ability to track performance in real-time gives IT employees the ability to spot any potential issues or threats as soon as they occur and significantly mitigate the damages. In the past, if a system failed, it could take hours to fix it. With real-time data, issues can be predicted, detected, and solved in a matter of minutes.
• Industry-specific features: There are a range of use cases and scenarios in which reports prove invaluable to the IT department. Therefore, the tool you choose to invest in should offer industry-specific features that can cover all those use cases efficiently. From integration to multiple data sources to automated backups to RMM features and much more, these modern capabilities will help your CTO to skyrocket the success of IT strategies and ensure the entire business is secure and efficient. 

Real-life Applications Of Dashboards & IT Reporting

Following on from our practical IT reports examples, we will explore some real-world use cases of modern dashboard reporting based on different organizational needs. While not all of these examples are directly related to IT, they serve to demonstrate the value of reporting software designed to help businesses squeeze maximum value from their most precious technical data:

a) Management: Regardless of your industry or sector, if you’re a senior staff member, you’ll be required to communicate with other managers and executives on top-level business initiatives. That said, if you’ve identified recurrent IT issues that need fixing or are looking to develop new technology initiatives to roll out across the organization, you’ll need to clearly communicate these objectives in cross-departmental meetings. A technical report template will help you do just that—as well as adhere to management reporting best practices.

b) SaaS: If your business offers, develops, or works with software-as-a-service platforms, a dynamic SaaS dashboard (akin to IT reporting tools) will help you maximize the impact of your most valuable data, some of which can be used to enhance your technical support initiatives. SaaS businesses aim to establish their IT solutions on the market, increase their customers' base and loyalty, and generate profits. To do so, comprehensive reporting is needed, and dashboards can help.

c) TV dashboards: By taking your technical support report template data and displaying it as a TV dashboard , you’ll be able to give everyone within the department real-time access to important information. Moreover, with TV dashboards strategically positioned throughout the organization, you’ll be able to improve transparency and give everyone within the business the information they need to do their job better.

d) Cyber security: If you’re looking at an IT department monthly report sample, one of these IT reporting tools should focus on cyber security. In the digital age, failing to fortify your business against the threat of cybercrime is like leaving your front door wide open. By consolidating your most valuable cybercrime-related metrics into one visual analytics dashboard, you can provide a safer, swifter, and more secure helpdesk service. In-the-moment analytics will provide alerts on potential threats so you can find the source immediately and nip any potential issues in the bud. Gaining a panoramic view of your IT-based cyber prevention metrics will also empower you to improve and update your processes according to specific cyber security trends or patterns.

e) Remote working: In an age where the concept of remote working is becoming commonplace across industries, working with the right information empowers pressured IT departments with the assets to make this most integral infrastructure possible. Nowadays, professionals expect businesses to offer remote working experiences and opportunities, so getting it right is critical to attracting and retaining the right recruits. Armed with a dynamic IT service report template, it’s possible to set up practical systems and strategies for mass remote working setups as well as video conferencing, project management software, and employee chat rooms (among many other applications).

“Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to gaming.” – Chris Lynch

The five applications mentioned above are merely the tip of the iceberg when discussing the power and versatility of dynamic digital reports. Every IT report example we've covered here offers an enormous level of value to modern IT departments looking to achieve constant and consistent growth in the face of continual change.

Key Takeaways From Modern IT Reporting 

Whether you’re working with an IT department monthly report sample, a weekly sample, or any other report level, you will boost your business performance to no end. Your IT department is the lynchpin of almost any organization. Improve the efficiency, intelligence, and responsiveness of your information technology performance, and the rest will follow.

It’s clear that to run your IT department to its optimum capacity. You need access to tools and information surpassing basic metrics and insights alone. Interactive modern reports are the way forward. Mobile, agile, robust, customizable, and highly visual, modern technical reports will help you easily tackle issues, improve the departmental structure, and make all-important daily, weekly, and monthly decisions with a justified sense of confidence.

Delivering valuable and uncompromised IT help to your end-users will determine your entire IT ecosystem's success and ongoing performance. To manage every aspect efficiently, you must work with the right tools and follow the best practices. By understanding what you need to do to create effective reports and drilling down into the wealth of features that such tools offer, you will make your IT department unstoppable, accelerating the entire business's success in the process.

Do you want to hop aboard the analytics and reporting train and push your organization forward? Try our 14-day free trial and level up your IT department today.

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Home » Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

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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

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• Table of Contents

Many professionals struggle to create effective reports due to a lack of understanding of the essential elements and organization required. This can lead to frustration and a failure to communicate key information to the intended audience.

In this blog, we’ll explore what is report writing, the types of reports, essential elements, and tips for creating effective reports to help you communicate your message and achieve your goals.

Definition of report writing? 

According to Mary Munter and Lynn Hamilton, authors of “Guide to Managerial Communication,” report writing is “the process of selecting, organizing, interpreting, and communicating information to meet a specific objective.”

What is report writing? 

Report writing refers to the process of creating a document that represents information in a clear and concise manner. Reports can be written for various purposes, such as providing updates on a project, analyzing data or presenting findings, or making recommendations.

Effective report writing requires careful planning, research, analysis, and organization of information. A well-structured report should be accurate, and objective, and contain a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. It should also be written in a professional and accessible style, with appropriate use of headings, subheadings, tables, graphs, and other visual aids.

Overall, report writing is an important skill for professionals in many fields, as it helps to communicate information and insights in a clear and concise manner.

What is a report? 

A report is a formal document that is structured and presented in an organized manner, with the aim of conveying information, analyzing data, and providing recommendations. It is often used to communicate findings and outcomes to a specific audience, such as stakeholders, or managers. Reports can vary in length and format, but they usually contain a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.

Types of report writing

By understanding the different types of report writing, individuals can select the appropriate format and structure to effectively communicate information and achieve their objectives. However, the kind of report used will depend on the purpose, audience, and context of the report.

1/ Informational reports: These reports provide information about a topic, such as a product, service, or process.

Further Reading : What is an information report

2/ Analytical reports: These reports present data or information in a structured and organized manner, often with charts, graphs, or tables, to help the reader understand trends, patterns, or relationships.

3/ Formal Reports: These are detailed and structured reports written for a specific audience, often with a specific objective. In comparison with informal reports , formal reports are typically longer and more complex than other types of reports. 

4/ Progress reports: These reports provide updates on a project or initiative, detailing the progress made and any challenges or obstacles encountered. 

5/ Technical reports: These reports provide technical information, such as specifications, designs, or performance data, often aimed at a technical audience.

6/ Research reports: These reports present the findings of research conducted on a particular topic or issue, often including a literature review, data analysis, and conclusions.

7/ Feasibility Report: A feasibility report assesses the likelihood of achieving success for a suggested project or initiative.

8/ Business Reports: These reports are used in a business setting to communicate information about a company’s performance, operations, or strategies. Different types of business reports include financial statements, marketing reports, and annual reports.

Structure of report writing 

The structure of a report refers to the overall organization and layout of the report, including the sections and subsections that make up the report, their order, and their relationships to each other. A report can we divided into three parts. 

Preliminary Parts:

• Acknowledgments (Preface or Foreword)
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Introduction (clear statement of research objectives, background information, hypotheses, methodology, statistical analysis, scope of study, limitations)
• Statement of findings and recommendations (summarized findings, non-technical language)
• Results (detailed presentation of findings with supporting data in the form of tables and charts, statistical summaries, and reductions of data, presented in a logical sequence)
• Implications of the results (clearly stated implications that flow from the results of the study)
• Summary (brief summary of the research problem, methodology, major findings, and major conclusions)

End Matter:

• Appendices (technical data such as questionnaires, sample information, and mathematical derivations)
• Bibliography of sources consulted.

This structure provides a clear and organized framework for presenting a research report, ensuring that all important information is included and presented in a logical and easy-to-follow manner.

Extra Learnings Role of a report structure in report writing  The report structure plays a crucial role in report writing as it provides a clear and organized framework for presenting information in an effective and logical manner. It ensures that the reader can easily understand the purpose and scope of the report, locate and access the relevant information.  The preliminary parts of the report, provide an overview of the report and aid navigation. The main text makes it easier for the reader to comprehend and analyze the information. And The end matter provides additional details and sources for reference. An organized report structure also helps the author to communicate their research and ideas effectively to the intended audience.

What is the report writing format? 

The format of report writing refers to the structure of a formal document that provides information on a particular topic or issue. The report writing format typically includes the following key components: 

8 Essential elements of report writing are: 

1/ Title: The title is the first thing that readers will see, and it should be clear and concise. The title should include the report’s subject or topic and the author’s name, date of writing, or who the report is for. Remember to keep the title brief and informative, avoiding vague or ambiguous language.

Example of Business Report Title Page:   “Market Analysis and Growth Strategies for XYZ Corporation” Author: Mary Johnson Date: January 2, 2022 Company: Earthcon Corporation Department: Strategy and Planning

In this example, the title page includes the name of the report, ‘Market Analysis 2022,’ the author’s name, ‘John Doe,’ the submission date, ‘January 1, 2024,’ and other details such as the name of the organization, ‘Earthcon Corporation.’

2/ Table of Contents : The table of contents provides an overview of the report’s contents. It should list all sections and subsections with clear headings. It is essential to make the table of contents organized and easy to read, allowing readers to locate specific information quickly.

Example of  Table of Contents I. Introduction…… 1 Purpose of the Report…… 2 Methodology Used…… 2 II. Executive Summary…… 3 III. Background and Context…… 3 IV. Analysis and Findings…… 4 Market Trends and Data…… 5 Competitor Analysis…… 6 SWOT Analysis…… 7 V. Recommendations and Conclusion…… 8 VI. References…… 9

3/ Summary : Also known as the executive summary, the summary provides a brief overview of the entire report. It should summarize the report’s main points, including findings, objectives, and recommendations. The summary should be written after the entire report is completed, and it should be concise and summarized in less than one page.

Example of executive summary: The Annual Sales Report for Earthcon Company shows a 10% increase in overall sales compared to the previous year. The report also reveals that the majority of sales came from the Midwest region and the target demographic is primarily males aged 25-40. Based on these findings, recommendations have been made to focus marketing efforts towards this demographic in the upcoming year.

4/ Introduction : The introduction introduces the report’s topic and informs readers what they can expect to find in the report. The introduction should capture readers’ attention and provide relevant background information. It should be clear and concise, including why the report was written and its objectives.

Example of Introduction:  This comprehensive report aims to analyze and evaluate the sales performance of EarthCon Corporation throughout 2024. It will look into detailed sales trends observed throughout the year, carefully examining the various factors that have influenced these trends. Additionally, the report will identify and highlight potential areas for growth, offering valuable insights and recommendations to drive future success.

5/ Body: The body is the longest section and includes all the information, data, and analysis. It should present information in an organized manner, often using subheadings and bullet points. The body should include all relevant research findings and data, often accompanied by visuals such as graphs and tables. It is essential to cite all sources correctly and remain objective, avoiding personal opinions or biases.

Example of Background and Context: This report seeks to analyze the influence of technological advancements on business productivity. Previous research has indicated a correlation between the adoption of innovative technologies and increased operational efficiency for Earthcon. The report will examine further into this topic and offer suggestions for maximizing the benefits of these advancements. Example of Analysis and Findings: The market trends and data show a steady increase in demand for innovative products, with a significant rise in sales in the past five years. In comparison, competitor analysis reveals that Earthcon Corporation is well-positioned to take advantage of this trend due to its strong brand reputation and product portfolio. A SWOT analysis also highlights potential areas for improvement and growth.

6/ Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the findings and conclusions of the report. It should wrap up all the essential information presented in the body and make recommendations based on the report’s findings. The conclusion must be brief and clear, avoiding the introduction of any new information not previously presented in the body.

7/ Recommendations: The recommendation section should provide suggested goals or steps based on the report’s information. It should be realistic and achievable, providing well-crafted solutions. It is often included in the conclusion section.

Example of Recommendations and Conclusion: Based on the analysis, it is recommended that EarthCon Corporation invest in research and development to continue producing innovative products. Additionally, efforts should be made to expand into emerging markets to increase global reach. In conclusion, the Annual Sales Report shows positive outcomes and recommends strategic actions for future growth.

8/ Appendices: The appendices section includes additional technical information or supporting materials, such as research questionnaires or survey data. It should provide supplementary information to the report without disrupting the report’s main content. 

It is important to use clear headings and subheadings and to label tables and figures. Also, proofreading and fact-checking are critical before submitting the report. A well-crafted report is concise, informative and free of personal bias or opinions.

What are the features of report writing

There are several key features of effective report writing that can help ensure that the information presented is clear, concise, and useful. Some of these features include:

1/ Clarity: Reports should be written in clear and concise language, avoiding jargon or technical terms that may be confusing to the reader. 

2/ Objectivity: A report should be objective, meaning that it should be free from bias or personal opinions. This is particularly important when presenting data or analysis.

3/ Accuracy: Reports should be based on reliable sources and accurate data. Information should be verified and cross-checked to ensure that it is correct and up-to-date.

4/ Structure: A report should be structured in a logical and organized manner, with clear headings, subheadings, and sections. 

5/ Visual aids: A report may include visual aids such as charts, tables, and graphs, which can help to illustrate the key points and make the information easier to understand.

6/ Evidence: Reports should include evidence to support any claims or findings, such as statistics, quotes, or references to relevant literature.

7/ Recommendations: Many reports include recommendations or suggestions for future action based on the findings or analysis presented.

Significance of report writing

Report writing is a critical skill that can have a significant impact on individuals, and organizations. In fact, a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that the ability to communicate effectively, including report writing, was the most important skill sought by employers.

• Reports provide decision-makers with the information they need to make informed decisions.
• Effective report writing demonstrates professionalism and attention to detail, which can help to build trust and credibility with clients.
• Reports can inform planning processes by providing data and insights that can be used to develop strategies and allocate resources.
• Reports often include recommendations or suggestions for future action, which can help to improve processes, procedures, or outcomes.

Further Reading: What is the significance of report writing

Report writing examples and samples

Example of Progress Report

The essential process of report writing

Report writing requires careful planning, organization, and analysis to ensure that the report effectively communicates the intended message to the audience. Here are the general steps involved in the process of report writing:

Plan and prepare:

• Identify the purpose of the report, the target audience, and the scope of the report.
• Collect and examine data from different sources, including research studies, surveys, or interviews.
• Create an outline of the report, including headings and subheadings.

Write the introduction:

• Start with a brief summary of the report and its purpose.
• Provide background information and context for the report.
• Explain the research methodology and approach used.

Write the main body:

• Divide the report into logical sections, each with a clear heading.
• Present the findings and analysis of the research in a clear and organized manner.
• Use appropriate visual aids, such as tables, graphs, or charts to present data and information.
• Utilize a language that is both clear and Brief, and avoid using unnecessary jargon or technical terminology.
• Cite all sources used in the report according to a specified citation style.

Write the conclusion:

• Summarize the main findings and conclusions of the report.
• Restate the purpose of the report and how it was achieved.
• Provide recommendations or suggestions for further action, if applicable.

Edit and revise:

• Review the report for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Check that all information is accurate and up-to-date.
• Revise and improve the report as necessary.

Format and present:

• Use a professional and appropriate format for the report.
• Include a title page, table of contents, and list of references or citations.
• Incorporate headings, subheadings, and bullet points to enhance the report’s readability and facilitate navigation.
• Use appropriate fonts and sizes, and ensure that the report is well-structured and visually appealing.

Important Principles of report writing

To write an effective report, it is important to follow some basic principles. These principles ensure that your report is clear, concise, accurate, and informative. In this regard, here are some of the key principles that you should keep in mind when writing a report:

1/ Clarity: The report should be clear and easy to understand. 

2/ Completeness: The report should cover all the relevant information needed to understand the topic

3/ Conciseness: A report should be concise, presenting only the information that is relevant and necessary to the topic. 

4/ Formatting: The report should be properly formatted, with consistent fonts, spacing, and margins

5/ Relevance: The information presented in the report should be relevant to the purpose of the report.

6/ Timeliness: The report should be completed and delivered in a timely manner.

7/ Presentation: The report should be visually appealing and well-presented.

Extra Learnings Styles of report writing When it comes to the style of report writing, it’s important to use hard facts and figures, evidence, and justification. Using efficient language is crucial since lengthy reports with too many words are difficult to read. The most effective reports are easy and quick to read since the writer has comprehended the data and formulated practical recommendations. To achieve this, it’s important to write as you speak, avoid empty words, use descending order of importance, use an active voice, and keep sentences short. The goal should be to write to express and not to impress the reader.  It’s also important to get facts 100% right and to be unbiased and open. By following these tips, one can create a well-written report that is easy to understand and provides valuable insights.

Differences between a report and other forms of writing

Reports are a specific form of writing that serves a distinct purpose and have unique characteristics. Unlike other forms of writing, such as essays or fiction, reports are typically focused on presenting factual information and making recommendations based on that information. Below we have differentiated report writing with various other forms of writing.

Essay vs report writing

Project writing vs report writing, research methodology vs report writing, article writing vs report writing, content writing vs report writing, business plan vs report writing, latest topics for report writing in 2024.

The possibilities for report topics may depend on the goals and scope of the report. The key is to choose a topic that is relevant and interesting to your audience, and that you can conduct thorough research on in order to provide meaningful insights and recommendations.  

• A market analysis for a new product or service. 
• An evaluation of employee satisfaction in a company. 
• A review of the state of cybersecurity in a particular industry. 
• A study of the prevalence and consequences of workplace discrimination. 
• Analysis of the environmental impact of a particular industry or company. 
• An assessment of the impact of new technology or innovations on a particular industry or sector. 

Report writing skills and techniques 

Effective report writing requires a combination of skills and techniques to communicate information and recommendations in a clear, and engaging manner.

From organizing information to tailoring the report to the intended audience, there are many factors to consider when writing a report. By mastering these skills and techniques, you can ensure that your report is well-written, informative, and engaging for your audience. Some of the primary ones are: 

1/ Organization and structure: Structure your report in a logical and organized manner with headings and subheadings.

2/ Use of data and evidence: Present objective data and evidence to support your findings and recommendations.

3/ Audience awareness: Tailor your report to the needs and interests of your intended audience.

4/ Effective visuals: Use graphs, charts, or other visuals to communicate complex information in a clear and engaging way.

5/ Editing and proofreading: Carefully edit and proofread your report to ensure it is error-free and professional.

6/ Tone: Use a professional and objective tone to communicate your findings and recommendations.

7/ Time management: Manage your time effectively to ensure you have enough time to research, write, and revise your report.

Tips for effective report writing

• Understand your audience before you start writing. 
• Start with an outline and cover all the important points. 
• Employ clear and concise language.
• Utilize headings and subheadings to organize your report.
• Incorporate evidence and examples to support your points.
• Thoroughly edit and proofread your report before submission.
• Follow formatting guidelines If your report has specific formatting requirements.
• Use visuals to enhance understanding.

What is the ethical consideration involved in report writing 

Ethical considerations play a crucial role in report writing. The accuracy of the information presented in the report is of utmost importance, as it forms the basis for any conclusions or recommendations that may be made. In addition, it is essential to avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original sources of information and ideas. 

Another crucial ethical consideration is confidentiality, particularly when the report contains sensitive or confidential information. It is important to safeguard this information and prevent its disclosure to unauthorized individuals.

Avoiding bias in report writing is also crucial, as it is essential to present information in an objective and unbiased manner. In cases where research or data collection is involved, obtaining informed consent from human subjects is a necessary ethical requirement.

By taking these ethical considerations into account, report writers can ensure that their work is fair, accurate, and respectful to all parties involved.

Common mistakes in report writing 

There are several common mistakes that students and report writers make in report writing. By avoiding these common mistakes, students as well as report writers can create effective and impactful reports that are clear, accurate, and objective.

1/ Writing in the first person: Often, students and report writers commit an error by writing in the first person and utilizing words such as “I” or “me. In reports, it is recommended to write impersonally, using the passive voice instead.

2/ Using the wrong format: Reports should use numbered headings and subheadings to structure the content, while essays should have a clear line of argument in their content.

3/ Failing to introduce the content: The introduction of the report should introduce the content of the report, not the subject for discussion. It is important to explain the scope of the report and what is to follow, rather than explaining what a certain concept is.

4/ Missing relevant sections: Students and report writers, often miss out on including relevant sections that were specified in the assignment instructions, such as a bibliography or certain types of information. This can result in poor interpretation.

5/ Poor proofreading: Finally, not spending enough time proofreading the reported work can create unwanted mistakes. Therefore, It is important to proofread and correct errors multiple times before submitting the final report to avoid any mistakes that could have been easily corrected.

By avoiding these common mistakes, students and report writers can improve the quality of their reports. 

What are some challenges of report writing and how to overcome them

Report writing can be a challenging task for many reasons. Here are some common challenges of report writing and how to overcome them:

1/ Lack of clarity on the purpose of the report: To overcome this challenge, it is important to clearly define the purpose of the report before starting. This can help to focus the content of the report and ensure that it meets the needs of the intended audience.

2/ Difficulty in organizing ideas: Reports often require a significant amount of information to be organized in a logical and coherent manner. To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to create an outline or flowchart to organize ideas before beginning to write.

3/ Time management: Writing a report can be time-consuming, and it is important to allow sufficient time to complete the task. To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to create a timeline or schedule for the various stages of the report-writing process.

4/ Writer’s block: Sometimes writers may experience writer’s block, making it difficult to start or continue writing the report. To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to take a break, engage in other activities or brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas.

5/ Difficulty in citing sources: It is important to properly cite sources used in the report to avoid plagiarism and maintain credibility. To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to use citation management tools, such as EndNote or Mendeley, to keep track of sources and ensure accurate referencing.

6/ Review and editing: Reviewing and editing a report can be a challenging task, especially when it is one’s own work. To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to take a break before reviewing the report and seek feedback from others to gain a fresh perspective.

By being aware of these challenges and taking proactive steps to overcome them, report writers can create effective and impactful reports that meet the needs of their intended audience.

Best Software for writing reports 

Report writing software has made it easier for writers to produce professional-looking reports with ease. These software tools offer a range of features and functionalities, including data visualization, collaboration, and customization options. In this section, we will explore some of the best report-writing software available:

1/ Tableau : This tool is great for creating interactive and visually appealing reports, as it allows users to easily create charts, graphs, and other data visualizations. It also supports data blending, which means that you can combine data from multiple sources to create more comprehensive reports.

2/ Zoho reporting : This tool is designed to help users create and share professional-looking reports quickly and easily. It offers a variety of customizable templates, as well as a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to add data and create charts and graphs.

3/ Bold Reports by Syncfusion : This tool is designed specifically for creating reports in .NET applications. It offers a wide range of features, including interactive dashboards, real-time data connectivity, and customizable themes and templates.

4/  Fast Reports : This tool is a reporting solution for businesses of all sizes. It allows users to create reports quickly and easily using a drag-and-drop interface and offers a variety of templates and customization options. It also supports a wide range of data sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and web services.

Further Reading : 10+ Best Report Writing Software and Tools in 2024

What is the conclusion of report writing

The conclusion of report writing is the final section of the report that summarizes the main findings, conclusions, and recommendations. It should tie together all the different sections of the report and present a clear and concise summary of the key points. 

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE has given an inverted introduction framework that can use used for writing effective conclusions for reports. 

Example of conclusion in report writing:

The implication of the above diagram can be explained with the following example:  

1. RETURN TO TOPIC:

Social media has revolutionized the marketing landscape, providing new opportunities for brands to connect with their target audience.

2. RESTATE THESIS:

However, the complexities and limitations of social media mean that it is unlikely to completely replace traditional marketing methods. The role of the marketing professional remains crucial in ensuring that social media strategies align with the company’s overall goals and effectively reach the desired audience.

3. SUMMARY OF IDEAS DISCUSSED:

Automated tools cannot fully account for the nuances of human communication or provide the level of personalization that consumers crave. Therefore, the most effective marketing strategies will likely blend social media tactics with traditional marketing channels.

4. CONCLUDING STATEMENT [restating thesis]:

In conclusion, while social media presents significant opportunities for brands, the expertise of marketing professionals is still essential to creating successful campaigns that achieve desired outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1) what is report writing and example.

Ans: Report writing involves preparing a structured document that delivers information to a particular audience in a clear and systematic manner. An example of a report could be a business report analyzing the financial performance of a company and making recommendations for improvement.

Q2) What is report writing and types of reports?

Ans: The act of presenting information in an orderly and structured format is known as report writing. Reports come in different types, such as analytical reports, research reports, financial reports, progress reports, incident reports, feasibility reports, and recommendation reports.

Q3) What are the 5 steps of report writing

The five steps of report writing, are as follows:

• Planning: This involves defining the purpose of the report, determining the audience, and conducting research to gather the necessary information.
• Structuring: This step involves deciding on the structure of the report, such as the sections and subsections, and creating an outline.
• Writing: This is the stage where the actual writing of the report takes place, including drafting and revising the content.
• Reviewing: In this step, the report is reviewed for accuracy, coherence, and effectiveness, and any necessary changes are made.
• Presenting: This final step involves presenting the report in a clear and professional manner, such as through the use of headings, visuals, and a table of contents.

Q4) What is a report in short answer? 

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What is a Nursing Brain Sheet?

What is a nursing report sheet.

• How to Create
• Why They're Important

How to Read a Nursing Report Sheet

• Free Templates

Nursing report sheets, also commonly referred to as brain sheets or patient report sheets, are a valuable pre-made tool that nurses can use during a shift to keep important patient information. Truthfully, a report sheet is essential to making it through any shift. 

Keep reading to learn more about nursing report sheets and get free templates you can use!

A nursing report sheet is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a customized sheet that contains important information regarding the patient and their medical history. 

How Nurses Use Brain Sheets

Essentially, it is used to tell you the “down and dirty” about your patient. While every nurse should be going through their patient’s charts at the beginning of the shift and then throughout the shift, a nursing report sheet can be used to keep tasks and “to-do’s” organized. 

How Hospitals Use Them

Some hospitals will have one nursing report sheet that will get updated each shift with a specific patient, while others hospitals will expect nurses to write a new report sheet with each shift. 

Report sheets may go with the patient when transferred between units and are ultimately discarded when the patient is discharged. 

How to Create a Nursing Brain Sheet

What’s included on a nursing report sheet varies depending on the hospital, unit, and the individual. It will depend on the expectations and policies of the hospital, and it’s important to speak to the nurse educator to determine the unit’s best practices. 

Examples of what to include on a nursing report sheet include,

• Patient Information, including name, date of birth, room number
• Medical diagnosis
• Attending medical provider/coverage team
• Medication(s)
• Vital Signs
• Lab results, pending lab work
• Important procedures
• Family information
• To-do(s) for shift
• Nursing notes

Why Do You Need a Nursing Report Sheet?

Nursing report sheets can be the key to success when organizing information about your patients, especially if you work on a medical-surgical floor and have a higher patient/nurse ratio. 

There are some key benefits of the nursing report sheet, including, 

• Provide accountability 
• Improving the safety of the patient
• Standardized report
• Fast access to patient information
• Keeping charting organized
• Organizing patient care

Some nurses will read it from top to bottom, while others will organize it based on systems. 

Personally, most experienced nurses will organize their report sheets based on systems. Double-sided report sheets are even better, with one side having all the patient and medical information and the reverse side having an hourly checklist to help organize your shift.

To use a nursing report sheet, first start by including the information you can find in the chart, including basic patient personal information and health history. The remainder can be filled out during the shift report or after spending some time looking at the chart. 

3 Free Nursing Report & Brain Sheet Templates

Kathleen Gaines (nee Colduvell) is a nationally published writer turned Pediatric ICU nurse from Philadelphia with over 13 years of ICU experience. She has an extensive ICU background having formerly worked in the CICU and NICU at several major hospitals in the Philadelphia region. After earning her MSN in Education from Loyola University of New Orleans, she currently also teaches for several prominent Universities making sure the next generation is ready for the bedside. As a certified breastfeeding counselor and trauma certified nurse, she is always ready for the next nursing challenge.

Plus, get exclusive access to discounts for nurses, stay informed on the latest nurse news, and learn how to take the next steps in your career.

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• For Small Business

How to Design an Impactful Annual Report in 2024 [+ Free Template & Examples]

• May 13, 2024
• by steven-austin

Annual reports are a crucial way for companies to share their financial performance, key accomplishments, and future plans with investors, shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders. In fact, 80% of investors say that an annual report influences their investment decisions, according to a survey by the National Investor Relations Institute.

However, simply publishing a dry document full of numbers and text is not enough to fully engage readers and communicate your company‘s story. The design of your annual report plays an essential role in how effectively the information is presented and received.

"When an annual report is well-designed, it boosts understanding and helps readers retain the information for longer," says Sarah Smith, an annual report specialist at a top design agency. "Compelling visuals, digestible data, and a clear content structure are all essential for getting your report noticed and read."

In this guide, we‘ll share expert tips and best practices for crafting an annual report design that will impress your readers and effectively convey your company‘s growth and accomplishments. Plus, we‘ve included a free customizable annual report template and 10 real-world examples to inspire your own designs. Let‘s dive in!

Essential Elements of a Successful Annual Report Design

Before we look at the full process of designing an annual report from start to finish, let‘s break down the core elements every report design needs:

1. Engaging cover design

Your annual report cover is the first thing readers will see, so it needs to be visually appealing and communicate what the report contains at a glance. Aim for a simple, bold design that incorporates your company branding.

2. Organized content flow

A clear content structure will make your annual report easy to navigate and understand. Organize the information into logical sections like:

• Table of contents
• Letter from leadership
• Financial highlights
• Business overview
• Accomplishments and milestones
• Future plans/looking ahead
• Key performance metrics

Use clear page titles, subheadings, and section dividers to further organize the content and guide readers through in a logical way.

3. Clean, skimmable layout

Avoid long, dense chunks of text that will overwhelm readers. Break up your content into short paragraphs, bulleted lists, pull quotes, sidebars, and plenty of white space. Use a grid layout for a tidy, organized look.

"The best annual reports are easy to skim and navigate, with bite-sized bits of text and ample breathing room," says Smith. "Focus on the most crucial information instead of bombarding readers with walls of text and data."

4. Compelling data visualization

The financial data and performance metrics are key parts of an annual report, but simply listing the numbers is not very engaging. Instead, transform data into compelling visual elements like colorful charts, graphs, infographics and diagrams.

A huge 95% of people believe data visualization helps them understand and retain information better, according to research by Venngage. So look for opportunities to present your annual report data visually whenever possible.

5. Strategic pops of color

Color is a powerful tool for making your annual report more visually compelling while still looking polished and professional. Use color strategically to:

• Reinforce your company‘s brand identity
• Highlight key information and sections
• Create visual interest and break up text
• Organize or categorize information

"Color-coding your sections or using a bold accent color to highlight key stats is a great way to add visual impact to an annual report design," says Smith. Just be sure to also keep accessibility in mind and test your color contrast.

6. Strong, readable typography

Choose simple, highly legible fonts for your annual report – both for print and digital versions. Use fonts from your company‘s brand style guide if available. Keep the number of fonts to 2-3 and use consistent font sizes and heading styles to create a clean, polished look.

7. High-quality visuals

Incorporating photos, illustrations, icons, and other visual elements adds interest and personality to your annual report design. Use high-resolution images and graphics that align with your company‘s established visual identity.

Photos of company leadership, events, and products help personify your brand. Data visualizations, illustrations, and icons support and enhance the messaging. Avoid generic stock photos in favor of authentic brand visuals.

8. Clear branding

An annual report is an important branding opportunity, so it should look and feel cohesive with your company‘s overall brand identity. Incorporate your logo, brand colors, fonts, and any other established brand elements.

If you‘re creating digital annual reports, include links to your company‘s website and social media profiles as well. This reinforces brand recognition and makes it easy for readers to connect with you in other places online.

"Your annual report should look like it came from your company, not a completely separate entity," says Smith. "Cohesive branding across all your investor relations communications will build trust and credibility."

How to Design Your Own Compelling Annual Report [Free Template]

Now that you know the key elements of a well-designed annual report, let‘s look at how you can create your own from scratch. Follow these steps:

Gather your content: Collect all the information you‘ll need for your annual report, including the financial statements, performance data, leadership profiles, product updates, and so on. Organize it into sections as outlined above.

Write the copy: Start drafting the written portion of your report, aiming to keep the text as concise and easy to read as possible. Create a compelling narrative flow and use active, engaging language.

Outline the structure: Map out the full structure and page flow of your report in a content outline. Decide what information will go on each page and in what order. Don‘t forget to include the front and back covers, table of contents, and any appendices at the end.

Plan data visualization: Look at your data and metrics to identify opportunities to create charts and infographics. Consider what types of visualizations will present the data most clearly – bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, pictograms, etc. Sketch out rough concepts to get started.

Design the layout: Use a tool like Adobe InDesign or a customizable annual report template to create your layouts. Focus on clean, easy-to-read spreads with ample white space, clear section headers, and consistent margins and gutters. Create a cohesive design across all pages, using master pages for repeated elements.

"Using a pre-formatted annual report template can be a huge time-saver if you‘re new to annual report design or don‘t have a large design team," says Smith. "Look for a flexible template that you can easily customize with your own branding, content, and data visualizations."

Fine-tune the typography: Format all your text, headers, and data labels using the fonts and sizes in your style guide. Pay attention to things like line spacing, text alignment, and paragraph spacing to ensure readability.

Enhance with visuals: Place your final data visualizations, photos, illustrations, and any other visual elements. Ensure the graphics you use are high-resolution and fit seamlessly with the rest of the design.

Perfect the colors: Apply color throughout the report in an intentional way, using no more than 3-4 primary colors. Make sure there is plenty of contrast between text and background colors. Consider using tints of your primary colors for a consistent look.

Refine & proof: Do several rounds of revisions to polish the design and ensure all alignments, spacing, and typography are flawless. Proofread all the text and numbers carefully. Print out a draft to view the design at actual size.

Adapt for digital: Once your print design is final, create a digital PDF version as well. You may also want to adapt the design into an interactive online report, slideshow, or infographic for your website.

To make this process easier, we‘ve created a free customizable annual report template you can use. The template includes 25 pages in a print-ready Adobe InDesign file. It has placeholder text and data visualizations that you can easily swap out with your own content, as well as modern, professional design elements that can be tailored to your brand.

5 Examples of Well-Designed Annual Reports

Looking for more annual report design inspiration? Check out these five examples from leading companies.

Example 1: Spotify

Music streaming giant Spotify always takes an innovative, interactive approach to their annual "Wrapped" report, which highlights listener data and trends from the past year.

The 2022 report featured a dedicated website with animated data visualizations, large images, and clickable elements to explore different sections. Bold Shapes and gradients align with Spotify‘s bright, youthful branding.

Example 2: Microsoft

Microsoft‘s 2022 annual report features a clean, easy-to-navigate web layout. A sidebar menu allows readers to jump to specific sections. Alternating text and data visualizations create an engaging rhythm. High-quality photos add a human touch.

The design uses Microsoft‘s brand fonts, colors, and graphic elements for a consistent look and feel. Pops of bold blue and red call attention to important metrics.

Example 3: Stripe

Payment processing platform Stripe took an editorial-inspired approach to their 2021 annual report. The design resembles a magazine layout, with an eye-catching cover, big headlines, short blocks of text, and full-page visuals.

Simple line graphs, pie charts, and numbered lists make it easy to quickly grasp the data shared. Bright color accents and a unique cut-out page style add playful visual interest.

Example 4: Airbnb

Airbnb‘s 2021 annual report stands out with its bold, full-page header numbers highlighting key stats and a bright pink color used throughout. The report features playful travel-themed illustrations to visualize concepts and break up the content.

Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and plenty of white space make even the most text-heavy pages easy to read. Airbnb‘s signature font and illustration style make it instantly recognizable.

Example 5: Warby Parker

Eyewear brand Warby Parker highlights growth across multiple retail channels in their 2021 annual report using data-rich infographics and illustrations. Colorful product photos add visual interest.

Each section is clearly labeled with a large headline and features short snippets of text and bullet points for easy skimming. Warby Parker‘s signature blue color is used throughout to reinforce the brand.

Taking inspiration from these examples, think about how you can incorporate strong branding, compelling data visualizations, and an organized layout into your own company‘s annual report design. Use our free annual report template as a starting point, and customize to fit your needs.

With some creativity and attention to design best practices, you can transform your company‘s story and data into a beautiful visual experience. An annual report is the perfect opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments and connect with stakeholders – make the most of it with an elevated, impactful design.

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11 Best Word Report Template Sites (2024) [FREE]

1. introduction.

In today’s fast-paced business world, professionals are often tasked with creating detailed and appealing reports. These reports must be informative, easy to read, and visually pleasing. A well-designed report can make a significant impact on the readers, convincing them of the findings presented. This is where Word report template sites come into play.

1.1 Importance of Word Report Template Site

Word report template sites offer a variety of pre-designed report templates that can greatly reduce the time and effort involved in creating a report from scratch. These templates include different layouts, graphic elements, chart designs, and more. Whether it’s a business report, project report, or academic paper, these templates provide a professional look while maintaining the ease of customization. They are an invaluable tool for anyone tasked with creating a compelling report.

1.2 Objectives of this Comparison

The objective of this comparison is to guide users in choosing a suitable Word report template site according to their needs. Among the hundreds of template sites available, the choice can be overwhelming. Careful comparison, based on specific criteria such as the variety, aesthetic quality, ease of use, and cost of templates, will enable users to make an informed decision. Through this analysis, we will identify the pros and cons of each site, to assist you in finding a site that best meets your unique needs.

1.3 Word Document Repair Tool

A powerful Word document repair tool is also essential to all Word users. DataNumen Word Repair is a preferred one:

2. Microsoft Report Template

The Microsoft Office’s report template collection is the official resource for Word templates, offering a wide array of options for different types of reports. Whether you’re crafting an annual corporate report, a research report, a project status report, or a student report, Microsoft provides numerous templates to suit your needs.

• Variety: There are hundreds of report templates available, suitable for different purposes, industries, and formats.
• Compatibility: Being a product of the same parent company, these templates are fully compatible with MS Word, ensuring that there won’t be any compatibility issues.
• Cost: All templates here are free of charge and can be downloaded directly from the site.
• Customization: Although the templates are extensive, they may lack the level of customization offered by some other websites.
• Unique Designs: Despite the sheer volume of templates, there is a possibility that other users may frequently use some of the more popular templates, reducing its uniqueness.

3. Template.Net Report Template In Word

Template.net offers a wide selection of report templates for Word with a distinctive focus on design-based templates. The platform serves as a marketplace for creative professionals to share their work, covering diverse fields such as business, education, marketing, and more.

• Diverse Styles: Templates vary in style and design, ideal for users who want to present their reports with a creative twist.
• User-Friendly Environment: The platform has an intuitive layout, making it easy for users to navigate and find the most suitable template.
• Quality: Since templates are created by professionals, they maintain a high standard of quality and look very polished and professional.
• Cost: While some templates are available for free, access to a more extensive collection and advanced features requires payment or subscription.
• Overwhelming Choices: Although the array of designs is a strength, it can also be a downside for users who prefer a more straightforward selection process.

4. Office Templates Online Professional Report Templates For MS Word & Excel

Office Templates Online is a platform dedicated to providing high-quality report templates for Microsoft Word and Excel. It offers an enormous range of styles and designs, ranging from business reports to academic documents. Aimed at professionals in various fields, it streamlines the process of creating comprehensive reports.

• Specialization: It specializes in report templates for Microsoft Word and Excel, hence it ensures full compatibility and smooth operation.
• Professional Designs: The designs offered are professional and suitable for formal settings, especially in the corporate world.
• Free Access: No payment is required to download and use the templates.
• Limited creativity: While the designs are professional, they can be simplistic and may not offer the same level of creativity as some other websites.
• Lack of variety: The template choices, though of high quality, may not offer as much variety as other platforms.

5. Word Templates For Free Download Report Templates

Word Templates for Free Download offers a selection of fully customizable report templates for Word. With basic functionality and clean designs, these templates are ideal for reports with straightforward requirements. This site presents users with an easy-to-use platform that doesn’t complicate the report-creating process.

• Free resources: All the templates are completely free and can be downloaded without any fees or subscriptions.
• Simplicity: Templates have a simple and clean layout, allowing for easier customization and straightforward use.
• Focus on essentials: The website provides the essentials without extra fluff, ideal for users who need a basic but professional template.
• Limited designs: The variety and creativity of designs can be quite limited compared to other sites.
• Lack of advanced features: The templates may lack advanced features and complex design elements, which may not be suitable for users who need more elaborately designed reports.

6. Powered Template Report Word Templates

Powered Template is another resource-rich website providing an array of professionally designed Word report templates. Created by designers for business or personal use, their templates deliver a combination of great design with the functionality of MS Word.

• Versatility: Their collection contains templates for various types of reports, accommodating a diverse range of needs.
• Professionally-designed: The templates are designed by professional designers, offering superior quality in terms of aesthetic appeal.
• Presentation-focused: Powered Template provides numerous infographic and data visualization tools, which can make reports more engaging and comprehensible.
• Cost: While some templates are available for free, many require payment. The price varies among the premium templates.
• Required Sign-up: Users need to sign-up to access some templates, which can be a barrier for those seeking quick access.

7. My Word Templates Report Template

My Word Templates provides a straightforward and user-friendly site for downloading various Word report templates. The site offers a solid array of designs and formats that cater to a wide spectrum of reporting needs, from academic to business-orientated reports or even for personal use.

• Ease of use: With a simple interface , it takes just a few clicks to download and start using the templates.
• Free to use: All templates available on the site are free of charge, making it a budget-friendly option.
• Solid variety: The site offers a good assortment of templates to cater to different types of report needs.
• Limited designs: While there’s a good variety of templates, the design options might be limited if you’re looking for something very specific or unique.
• Basic features: The templates do not offer advanced perks like interactive charts or infographics.

8. Etsy LeafloveSpace Report Template

Etsy’s LeafloveSpace is a unique marketplace that offers designer-created Word report templates. It provides an off-the-beaten-path alternative for users searching for more creative and visually stunning templates.

• Unique designs: Unlike more conventional sites, Etsy’s LeafloveSpace provides a plethora of original and creative templates.
• High quality: The templates are handcrafted by professional designers, ensuring a high-quality aesthetic finish.
• Positive customer feedback: The seller has a consistent record of positive customer reviews, indicating reliable service and product quality.
• Pricing: Users must purchase the templates, which may turn off individuals looking for free resources.
• Limited selection: The collection, while beautiful and unique, is far smaller than what more mainstream sites offer.
• Non-refundable: Due to the digital nature of the products, purchases are typically non-refundable, necessitating careful selection.

9. WPS Best Report Word Templates

WPS is known for its suite of office software, and among its array of services is a broad selection of Word report templates. With an easy-to-navigate site, WPS provides both well-designed templates and helpful resources for creating reports.

• High-quality designs: The templates provided by WPS are noted for their design quality and professional visual appeal.
• Additional resources: Alongside templates, WPS offers valuable how-to guides and tutorials, providing useful resources to help users create their reports.
• Wide Selection: With a vast array of templates from various fields and industries, users are likely to find a template that fits their needs.
• Compatibility: While these templates work well with WPS’s own software, there may be compatibility issues with other word processors.
• Cost: While many templates are available for free, some premium templates and features are behind a paywall.

10. HubSpot Monthly Report For Word, Excel, PDF, Google Docs, Google Slides

HubSpot, a leading platform in inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software, also offers an array of report templates. They are context-based and rich in content, targeting specific report requirements such as monthly analysis, project status, and more.

• Context Oriented: The templates provided by HubSpot are designed keeping specific use-cases in mind, ensuring they perfectly fit the purpose.
• Multiformat Support: The report templates support various formats like Word, Excel, PDF, and Google Docs, giving users the flexibility to choose according to their preference.
• Free Access: All templates by HubSpot can be accessed and downloaded for free.
• Registration Requirement: Users are required to register and provide contact information to download templates.
• Limited Styles: While the templates are content-rich, users looking for more creative designs may find the options slightly limited.

11. Smartsheet Project Status Report Templates

Smartsheet is an online work execution platform that allows teams to manage and automate collaborative work. Among its features is a suite of project status report templates. Smartsheet’s templates are specifically useful for project managers or teams needing to update stakeholders on their project’s progress.

• Designed for Project Management: Templates are specifically designed for project status reporting, keeping stakeholders informed of critical project metrics.
• Integration: These templates can be fully integrated with Smartsheet’s project management software, allowing for real-time updates and excellent project visibility.
• Collaboration-friendly: The platform allows for seamless team collaboration and productivity management.
• Subscription based: To avail the full benefits of the templates, users need a Smartsheet subscription.
• Niche focus: While great for project management, they may not be suitable for other types of reports.

12. BestTemplates Report Templates

BestTemplates is an online resource site dedicated to providing excellent report templates for a variety of uses. It offers a vast catalog of professionally made designs that cater to diverse reporting requirements, from basic to the more complex.

• Wide Range: The website provides a vast array of templates that cater to various industries and reporting requirements.
• Style and Flexibility: Templates are stylish, professional, and offer a high degree of customization to suit individual needs.
• High Quality: Templates are designed by professionals, ensuring a high standard of visual aesthetic and quality.
• Cost: Unlike many sites that offer free templates, BestTemplates is a premium service, and each template must be purchased individually.
• Complex designs: The high degree of customization could potentially be overwhelming to users who prefer simple and straightforward templates.

13. Summary

13.1 overall comparison table, 13.2 recommended template site based on various needs.

The ‘best’ site truly depends on the specific needs of the user. If cost is a critical factor, then the free resources provided by Microsoft Report Template, Office Templates Online or HubSpot might be the best fit. For users seeking creative designs, Etsy LeafloveSpace is recommended. Those needing detailed project report templates might find Smartsheet as the most suited. And, BestTemplates might cater best to users looking for a vast array of templates with a focus on quality and aesthetics.

14. Conclusion

14.1 final thoughts and takeaways for choosing an word report template site.

In conclusion, the selection of a Word report template site ultimately depends on the user’s needs, preferences, and budget. It’s essential to consider the quality and variety of templates, ease of use, compatibility with word processing software, and cost-effectiveness before making a decision.

While some sites offer free services, others charge a premium for their products. Free services, like Microsoft Report Templates and Office Templates Online are excellent for those on a budget, providing a solid starting point for creating professional-looking reports. On the other hand, premium sites, such as BestTemplates and Etsy LeafloveSpace, offer unique, high-quality designs for those willing to invest in their reports.

Remember, a carefully chosen and well-crafted template can significantly enhance the readers’ reception to your report. Thus, it’s worth investing the time and effort into finding the perfect template fitting your report’s purpose and audience.

Author Introduction:

Vera Chen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, which provides a wide range of products, including a tool to fix Zip archive files .

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• Reports User Guide
• Introduction

1 Introduction

The Brand Compliance Reports module provides a means of reporting on the data within Brand Compliance. Using Oracle BI Publisher , it replaces the previous Jaspersoft reporting solution. A suite of core reports are provided, along with the ability for clients to build their own custom reports.

This guide describes the concepts behind the reporting solution and provides chapters explaining the user steps for the following:

Report Administration

Creating Reports

Scheduling Reports

Viewing Reports

KPI Dashboards

Data Extracts

Supporting information includes details of the supplied core reports, and guidelines on designing and building report templates.

The framework of the Brand Compliance reporting solution is based around integration with the BI Publisher API. This allows for the administration, design, and scheduling aspects to all be contained within Brand Compliance, along with the generated report outputs.

The following diagrams show the components of the framework and their relationships. They are followed by a description of the key aspects.

Figure 1-1 Reports Framework

Figure 1-2 Basic Elements of the Reports Framework

Report Data

A set of data sources is provided which make data from the Brand Compliance modules available for reporting. The data sources are a predefined set of queries that generate the data in XML format for processing by BI Publisher . The data sources are optimized to create discrete data sets relevant to the area being reported on, along with appropriate data from related records. For reports that are likely to process high volumes of data, such as ingredient searches, the data source is located in a separate Data Warehouse database which is regularly synchronized with the application database.

The data sets can be further refined by applying filters to apply additional levels of selection criteria. These may be fixed values, or values for the user to supply when the report is scheduled to run.

The Report Data Source records are located in the Brand Compliance Reporting Admin area.

Report Templates and Report Designs

Reports are built from Rich Text Format (RTF) templates which can be authored using a word processor (Microsoft Word has a plug-in available to aid the design process). The RTF templates are combined with the XML data provided by the data source to form report designs.

Like data sources, the report designs can have filters to be applied to further refine the data set, either as fixed values, or values to be supplied at runtime.

The Report Template and Report Design records are located in the Brand Compliance Admin area.

For details of the reports supplied as part of the suite of core reports, see Appendix: Report Layouts . The supplied templates can be adapted to form custom variants, or new custom reports can be created. For guidance on the creation of RTF report templates, see Appendix: Designing RTF Templates .

Report Scheduling

The report designs are available to reporting users in the Report Schedules page. To schedule the report, the user chooses when it is to run, whether a single or recurring run, the type and location of output, and the recipients. Recipients may be an individual or all users with a particular job role.

Additional filters can be applied when scheduling the report to run.

Reports Output

When a report is run, the output will typically be a PDF or Excel file (other formats are available), which is located in the designated folder of the Report Outputs area. An email notification is delivered to the recipients containing a link to the report. Report outputs are presented as tabular reports or forms containing a combination of single values and tables. The outputs may also contain charts.

A reporting user will only have visibility of the reports that they have created or they are a recipient of. If the portal is operating the Enhanced Access Control (EAC) permissions feature, users will only be able to report on data that they can access within the application, according to their EAC area. For further details on the reporting permissions rules, see Appendix: Permissions .

KPI Reports

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reports are an alternative means of reporting on the Brand Compliance data. Intended for reporting on a single measure at a point in time, the outputs can be presented as dashboards on the Home page, either in tabular or chart format.

The KPI reports are configured in a similar way to reports, using data sources and KPI Report records in the Admin area. KPIs are scheduled in the same way as reports, and can use filters to refine the data set.

When a KPI report is run, it calculates or accumulates the measure value for that point in time and stores it in the KPI Results folder in the Report Outputs area, from where the data is used in the KPI dashboards or reports.

An additional reporting facility is provided in the form of data extracts, where the full contents of certain record types can be extracted to Comma-Separated Value (CSV) files that can be viewed as a spreadsheet. The data extract facility is available for the Supplier, Site, Product Record, and Product Specification record types.

The data extracts are only available to the reporting administrator user. They are created by filtering the contents of a list view to the desired set of records to be extracted. The results are stored in the Data Extracts folder in the Report Outputs area.

A Project & Activity Brief Extract data extract type is available for extracting Brief questions and answers for Projects and Activities. The extract is scheduled as a specific type of report. The generated spreadsheet files are saved to a Project & Activity Brief Extract folder in the Report Outputs library.

Language Translations

The report titles and column headings of the supplied core reports are coded to use system text in the same way as the application caters for alternative languages and customization. A separate Reporting set of system text values is supplied, containing the default values and language translations. These may be customized and extended by the system administrator.

When designing a report, the system text unique key codes are used in place of fixed text. When the report is run, the text for the language of the user who scheduled the report is located, falling back to the portal's base language if no translation is present. Similarly, if the report contains data that has alternative language translation within the application, such as values that are derived from a glossary, the value is translated to the user's language if a translation is present.

Report Purging

A means of automatically purging report outputs after a set period of time is provided. A system parameter is used to set the number of days a report will be retained after its creation. An email is set to the user containing a notification prior to the report being deleted. The default retention period is 90 days.