Since businesses deal every day with many activities, reporting is an important part of monitoring progress. And each person is answerable to some other senior person. They must report all the ongoing activities at the end of the day so that a better working record is established. This reporting of the whole activity from A to Z is usually made in the form of written reports. Verbal reporting is also appreciated, and it is done from time to time, but once the task is finished a complete written report is made of the whole ongoing activity and is presented to a responsible person. But wait, before moving to the steps of making a business report template, we need to learn about a business report in a bit more detail.
What is a business report?
A business report is a document written for evaluating a business activity, task, or some problem and is presented to the responsible senior business employers. This report defines the performance of a business for a specific situation or circumstance. The main purpose of a business report is communication. Communication over the situation to propose a better solution and a clear overview of the circumstance. A business report writing must be done in such a manner that it is easier for the reader to navigate through the report quickly and he gets a complete understanding of the whole scenario. We will provide you some steps to write a business report in a clear and easy-to-understand way. There are multiple types of business reports and we will provide clear detail on each of them as well.
What are the types of business reports?
There are two types of business reports, informal business reports, and formal business reports. These types of business reports lie under two different categories, information one and analytical one. There can be an informal analytical business report as well as a formal analytics business report. Let us explain to you briefly the types of business reports.
Informal business reports:
As the name depicts, the Informal business reports are informal in nature and type. We can say that these are not final reports, instead, these are much shorter ones and gives an overview of the situation. Although the number of words or pages is not specific and there is no such global standard of the count of words, but we can say that an informal report can have no more than 10 pages. The headings are easy and give a quick overview of the situation making the whole report readable. these headings are often considered as part of topics. Topics are multiple situations and headings lie under these topics according to situations and certain criteria of the circumstances. We can say that an informal business report is not the official final report, instead, it provides a simple detail and a shorter overview of the activity for which the report is written.
Formal Business reports:
In comparison to the informal business reports, the formal business reports are lengthier and more detailed. Although that there is no global criterion defined for the specific amount of words, but we can assume that a formal business report may start from 10 pages and may increase to 100+ pages as well. This means that formal business reports are more detail-oriented and contains brief information and analytics of the ongoing situation.
A formal report has a proper table of contents, that includes the introduction, topics, references, material, methodology, observations, results, conclusions, etc. All these sections will contain headings and the headings may have more sub-headings. We can say that the formal reports can be made based on a complex situation that demands a briefly detailed solution, the approach to solve the mysteries of the complex business activity. Ultimately this means that a formal report will have strict headings and the material must be discussed following those strict guidelines for a reader to stay on track.
Both mentioned types of reports can be further categorized as informational or analytical reports. An informational report is a report that contains detailed facts and figures of the ongoing circumstances while an analytical business report contains the analysis of these facts and figures. A Business report structure can also be classified into these mentioned categories. As we told before that, business intelligence reporting is a must-to-be-done task for better communication and keeping a keen eye on the ongoing circumstances. You can classify your report based on this provided information.
How do you write a business report?
A piece of detailed information on writing a formal business report is mentioned below. You can have an idea from the below-mentioned steps about the writing of a report and can make an informal report as well from the mentioned guidelines. Since the idea of report generation is necessary that is why you can have a look at our below-written guidelines:
1. Plan before writing the report
We recommend that before your start writing the business report, plan for the approach. Choose the technique, decide what you would like to discuss, what kind of outcome do you need. In this way, you can have a better overview of where to start writing the report and where to end appropriately. Planning is always appreciated before directly starting the work.
2. Check and choose a format
Choose a clear format; a format with better visuality and focus. Some organizations have developed their project report format. Before starting the search for report format on the internet, check-in your organization and see if they have an in-house report format. Otherwise, there are multiple report formats available on the internet as well as on our website. You can download multiple report templates from our website for free.
3. Narrate the title
Before writing the report, you must know the main topic of the report. That topic is often considered as the report title. If you cannot decide on a specific report title, then re-think your planning. Ponder that what the report is related to and why do you want to write it, what purpose it will serve and what will be the outcome. Based on these facts, decide the title of your report. The title section should also contain your name and other workers who helped you in the making of this report. Adding a date is also appreciated. Make sure that the report title is self-sufficient and self-explanatory. Avoid the lengthy titles since it will confuse the readers.
4. Make the table of contents
As you know that a formal report is much longer and a complex report so writing its table of contents becomes necessary. The table of content includes the guide of the topics and the number of pages on which these topics are located. The table of contents is usually written after the title section. It comes on the first pages of the report. But we recommend that you write this content table after writing the main report. First, you should formulate the whole report and then write the table of contents with the exact heading and the corresponding page numbers.
5. Write the abstract or summary
The summary or abstract of a report contains the most basic and main features of the business report. This section is of much importance since it helps the reader to have an idea of the whole report. Decide whether you would like to have a summary or introduction of the report. You may ask the senior person for it.
We recommend to you that the executive summary template must be formulated at the end of compiling the whole report so that you can enlist all the significant points and the results as well as the conclusion. We can refer to the summary or abstract as a mini-report that contains everything but in a compact manner. So, you can also write this part along with the table of content after the whole report compilation.
6. Write introduction
Introduction of a report means addressing the main problem for which you are writing this report. Address the problem and an overview of ongoing circumstances and then proceed to the further sections of the report that will include your technique to solve the problem. Write the introduction in a much clear way so that the reader gets enough information about the main pinpoint of the discussion.
7. Explain your methodology
The methodology section should explain your techniques to solve the business issue in a brief and explanatory manner. Write the method of research, it can be qualitative as well as quantitative. Just make sure that your research is legible and legitimate. Explain the method thoroughly so that no confusion lefts behind in the mind of the reader.
8. State your findings
In this section, you must explain the results and data you have obtained after your research and methodology. We can refer to this section as the research outcome. Be sure that your findings are logical and true. Mention the context here in such a way that you confirm yourself and your research. Include enough information so that reader understands your hard work and true fact-based research. You can appropriately state your results. Most of the time, organizations prefer the results in the form of a table or graph. The use of headings and sub-headings can also be made to visualize everything in a better and readable way. Impress your boss in this section of the business report.
9. Write the conclusions
Conclusions decide the matter of the situation if it is in your favor or not. If the ongoing situation and circumstances of a certain activity are not good for the business, then recommend your approaches to make the situation better. Mention the details of all possible solutions that how they can impact the current situation and whole business. If the circumstances are already in your favor, then state the techniques how you can grow and further improve productivity.
10. Add references/appendices
If you have made extensive research, then list all the sources from which you obtained the information. This thing will provide huge support to your arguments and approaches. Properly label everything in the report so that no confusion is left behind in the mind of the reader.
After formulating all these sections, proofread your report and remove all the unwanted contents that can make confusion. Edit it to remove any sort of errors either spelling or grammatical. This way the report will look more professional and can make your findings more credible and liable. Avoid complex terms and make sure each section of the report is in a flow with the next and previous section. As we told earlier to formulate the table of contents and abstract in the end, start doing them and finish the report promptly.
To conclude everything here, we can say that business reports are of much importance. These are written for reporting about a condition to a business senior. It allows better communication and a professional talk to understand the circumstances. There are two types of business reports; informal and formal which can be further placed into multiple subcategories of analytics and informatics. We also presented a method to formulate the business project report templates. You can follow those steps to formulate a business report on your own. Multiple progress report samples are also available on our website. You can download them for free and use them after editing as per your situations and criteria. An annual report template is also available on our website, have a look at that for a clear understanding of the business report. If you like our provided information on the topic of business reports, then share it with your friends too.
