Should a situation like this arise, there’s absolutely no reason to panic. Common mistakes are just certain numbers being wrong as in typos or some such and hence making no sense, some information missing or being outdated, etc. Mistakes happen and as it is, there are specific courses of action to take. The most important thing is to realize that it’s not the end of the world.

First things first, ask yourself if the mistake is making the annual report wrong somehow? Is it pervasive and important enough that it states something completely wrong which would give the readers misguided information? If yes, then you should take the report back and obviously amend it. If not, you should just make a note to yourself that in next year’s annual report the information about comparative figures now should be amended. As it happens, it may be hard to decide on how significant the misstatement really is and if you should take the reports back or not. The general rule is somewhere along the lines of what kind of decisions will the investors, owners and readers make based on the misreported information. To give you an example, if the percentage of macroeconomic growth in the management report is instead of 1% let’s say 5%, it’s hardly misleading as knowledgeable readers do not take this information before official statistic reports for an example. However, if for an example there’s a classification misstatement in such a way that the short term liabilities exceed current assets considerably, it does cast significant doubt over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. If it’s not clearly understandable that it’s a typo and not actual figures that would make sense, the readers and investors may make wrong decisions based on that and the report should be taken back for amendments.

To summarize, just ask, is it important enough or is it something that can be adjusted next year.

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