An annual report is a financial document used by businesses to provide important business and financial information to customers, shareholders, investors, analysts, employees, and the media. Producing creative reports that are highly visual and narrative-driven can help businesses connect with shareholders, potential investors, and customers.
This financial document containing information about the business performance and financial well-being of a business is published by both public and private sector companies. Small businesses and non-profit organizations also prepare yearly reports to connect with customers and provide information about past performance and future goals. Although annual reports are official documents, they don’t to be boring and uninteresting. While maintaining the transparency and accountability of a business, the financial document can be made designed consistent with the theme and made visually attractive and more readable by adding infographics and brief text. Here are some tips for you to remember while designing the annual report for your business.
Highlight Your Achievements
The main idea behind making an annual report is to show the work done by your company and its outcomes. It is an opportunity to highlight a company’s key achievements, expectations for the coming year, and overall goals and objectives. Make sure that you briefly define what you did and why you did it in the past year to establish the trust and liability of your customers and investors. You would also want to attract potential partners with your success and the yearly financial report is one of the best ways to do it.
Pick a Compelling Design
A well-designed report that is engaging and professional can be used as a marketing tool by a business. Select the design and color palette in accordance with the theme of your business. Use solid colors and layout techniques and emphasis on facts and important info by using bold texts or quotes.
Utilize Visual Data
To keep the report engaging and eye-catching, you can utilize infographics, charts, and graphs instead of numbers to display the data. You can also apply other innovative and compelling visual elements to avoid it from being dull.
Determine the Structure and Content
When it comes to preparing an annual report, it can be difficult to decide what information to keep and what should be discarded in the finalized report. Therefore, it’s important to map out the content and the structure of the report. Keep that text precise and clear. Also, give enough margin to maintain a balance between text and margin. Ideally, readers should be able to easily scan through the document and get the information they need.
The annual reports keep your critical business information up to date. It is important to keep it professional and engaging while being accurate too. It is important for you to utilize all the points stated above to create a good annual report for your company. You can also hire professional annual report designers to do this tedious task.