Why is a business report important?
Business reports are corporate documents, for internal use, dealing with various variables. Here we explain their importance.
Business reporting and its importance
The task of periodically evaluating and reassessing a company’s performance is commonplace. To this end, it is necessary to draw up reports that reflect the reality of the company.
Although these documents do not necessarily have official validity, they do have a great deal of internal validity. While the balance sheet and profit and loss accounts are compulsory for any commercial company, even a sole proprietorship that is registered, other reports are for management, executives and boards of directors. Hence, they are a fundamental part of corporate policy, especially when they are larger or complex in operation.
Not surprisingly, without clear and accurate information, it is very difficult to make decisions. And this information can be analysed not only internally, but also with respect to external factors such as the market, competition or the general economic situation. A business report, therefore, provides data to guide the establishment of company policies.
However, as mentioned above, not all reports are the same: there are different types and structures, depending on the circumstances. Here we provide more details…
Types of business reports
Company reports are basically of three types: expository, interpretative and demonstrative, depending on the degree of detail. Let’s see…
- Expository: these are the simplest, in the sense that they are limited to providing facts and figures. A sales or profit report, for example, would fall into this category.
- Interpretative: here the information provided is more extensive. It is no longer just a matter of providing data, but also of inferring conclusions from them; they can also be called explanatory.
- Demonstrative: this report, although based on data, aims to support a thesis. They are generally used by company managers to defend certain measures, with a well-defined prior context.
As we can see, this typology of reports opens up several interesting possibilities of varying complexity.
Structure of business reports
The structure of business reports varies from case to case, but the following sequence can be indicated:
- Introduction: an introduction can be more or less brief, but it indicates what the object of analysis is.
- Development: the development is the more mathematical part, where data and evidence must be provided. For this, the use of KPIs is particularly interesting at this point.
- Conclusion: the conclusion is a synthesis of the information developed. This is common in all types of company reports.
- Recommendation: this section is more typical of the demonstrative reports. The aim here is to propose solutions for a given context.
That said, for a business report to fulfil its purpose, it is essential that it is rigorous. This means that the data must be truthful and the methodology must be reliable.
To summarise...
Business reports, although not necessarily binding, do give relevant information. Do you need advice about the documentation that your company has to present to the Administration? At Asesoría Orihuela Costa we help the self-employed and SMEs to carry out their formalities, contact us without obligation!
