An Annual Report is quite literally a report about your company’s financial year. The word “annual” refers to a year and “report” to an overview.

In its essence the Annual Report serves quite a few purposes. First and foremost it’s a general overview of the financial year and an answer to the question “How it went?”

But an Annual Report also serves a purpose to different interest groups who are interested in specific information about some certain area – your suppliers are interested in how your sales are doing, your employees about all your obligations and liquid cash etc. It may also be that you started with a new product line and your financers are keen to know how it went. Hence it’s always suggested to comment all your main products, revenue streams and activities. An Annual Report serves also statistical information purpose to government officials – it’s about how many people you employee, what you pay as their salary, how much have you borrowed money etc.

It’s all put together in a format of a document that starts off with the main statements, explains how numbers are reached (in other words which accounting principles are used) and goes into more detail with all relevant figures in the notes to the financial statements.

If you want to learn more about Annual Report, please check out our Office ToDo UNI.