Maybe a full 2 year audit and guidelines that follow SEC protocosl to the exact detail for such a 9 figure transaction? This will include but not limited to BOD meetings, timecards, cash register tape audits, sanitary service logs, utility bills, green footprint impact studies, 3rd and 4th party carbon emissions reports, fire marshalls report of facility, termite inspections, FBI background checks, previous 20 year employment records, pay roll records, health insurance audits, retirement pension reports, employee handbook, inventory reports, sales forecasts, loss of inventory events, tax status, liability assessments, flood insurance reviews, 401K participants, cash flow receipts, structural inspections, work permits, cash receipts, osha compliance, tax return audits, third party assessments, customer reviews, product liability insurance, sales meeting memos, sales forecast reports, business sector forecasts, employee mental evaluations, sick and vacation time logs, compensation reports, credit card receipts, company vehicle logs, travel expense audits, entertainment expense receipts, employee high school report cards, independent contractor receipts, IRA audits, workers comp claim reports, employee lawsuits, toxic chemical study on a 5 block square radius, signs of paranormal activity, list of known cyber security threats, firewall integrity reports, janitorial logs, pest inspections, employee dental plan audits, payroll reports, equipment logs, asset audits, and a few other things.Reports may not be the most exciting communication format. But they’re important.
In order to make smart decisions about budgeting, marketing strategies, product development, and growth strategies, really, any part of your business, you can’t rely on gut feeling alone.
That’s where a lot of small businesses fail, in fact: they don’t use data to validate their ideas.
And if you’re trying to sway stakeholders, a report with a simple, elegant design and creative data visualizations is guaranteed to impress.
This guide will deliver the most essential business report templates, plus design tips and best practices.
CREATE A REPORT NOW
Top business report templates (click to jump ahead):
Activity reports
Annual reports
Project status reports
Budget reports
Nonprofit reports
Sales reports
Marketing reports
Case studies
White papers
Business report template FAQs
1. Activity Report Templates
Do you know what your team gets up to in a week? There’s a difference between working and getting things done.
It can be beneficial to ask your employees to report on what they worked on in a week, and to reflect on what was successful and what challenges they faced.
That’s why one of the business report examples we want to show you are activity reports.
Daily Activity Report Template
One of the major work from home best practices is consistent reporting and communication. If you’re still working on a telecommuting policy, consider adding an employee daily report.
Employee Daily Activity Business Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
These daily activity report templates are detailed but still concise enough for use on a day-to-day basis.
Simple Green Daily Activity Business Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Weekly Activity Report Template
The format of a weekly activity report can be simple or in-depth, depending on your needs. Realistically, your employees will probably have similar tasks from week to week.
Organize tasks in your weekly activity report into:
Completed Tasks
Ongoing Tasks
Tasks For the Next Week
Reporting results week over week can help you and your employees figure out which tasks to prioritize, which projects are taking too long to complete, and which metrics or goals might need more attention, especially if your team is telecommuting.
One of the business report examples that stands out is this weekly activity report template. It includes a plan for the following week, as well:
Employee Weekly Status Business Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
This weekly employee report sample breaks out completed and ongoing tasks:
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
This weekly activity report template has room to add your company branding in the header:
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few weekly activity report best practices for employees:
Analyze what worked this week and what can be improved upon next week.
Budget your time so you can have at least one or two deliverables by the end of the week (this can help you think iteratively).
Include any key metrics that were impacted, and any key results from your tasks.
Quarterly Employee Performance Review Template
Your employees have been submitting daily or weekly activity reports. It’s the end of the quarter and it’s time to reflect on their good and bad habits and give direction on future growth. We have a few business report samples that will make the review process easier.
For example, this quarterly performance review scores employees on four factors:
quarterly employee performance review template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Year-End Employee Activity Report
A year-end activity report, like the example below, should be conducted in conjunction with weekly and quarterly performance reviews. This business report sample highlights numerous areas of growth for the employee in neat and easy-to-understand charts.
Light Year End Employee Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Related: Our post on performance reviews, with additional templates and tips on how to make the process more effective.
Click to download this free employee performance review PDF template:
Free Employee Performance Review Template
Consumer Activity Report
Aside from employee activities, numerous business report examples focus on the relationship between customers and companies, like this monthly customer activity report. Using a variety of graphs and charts, the report outlines the successes and breakdowns among consumers.
Monthly Consumer Activity Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Return to Table of Contents
2. Annual Report Templates
An annual report is an all-encompassing document that allows you to reflect on your company’s past year, including:
Your company’s mission statement
Your company’s growth (financially, product-wise, culture-wise)
Your statement of income and cash flow
Your various business segments
Information about the company’s directors and executive officers
Information about your company’s stock and dividends
Wins and success stories
A lot of that sounds pretty dry, doesn’t it?
There’s actually a lot to be excited about in that list. You’re talking about how your company has grown, your wins (and maybe a few losses), and what’s on the horizon for the coming year.
You can bring that story to life in your annual report design and we have business report samples to inspire you.
This annual business report example uses a variety of charts and unique sections like “program highlights” to tell the agency’s story:
National Agency Annual Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Think about how you can represent your company visually:
Are there photos you can include of your business in action?
What fonts and colors reflect your business’s personality?
Are there icons you can use to illustrate certain concepts?
The below annual report design uses an energizing orange and yellow color scheme and cute icons. The format is highly visual and modern. All this reflects a dynamic company that’s optimistic about the future.
Food Corporate Annual Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
This company annual report template uses a mountain motif to reflect the company’s ambitious goals. Take a look at how the different sections of the report (“Strategy”, “Finance” and “Performance”) are color-coded to make the report easier to scan:
Annual Finance Report
USE THIS TEMPLATE
In the business report example below, the sleek, modern design with bold color accents reflects design trends in the games industry, which would appeal to stakeholders.
Retro Year End Annual Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
The same design ideas can be applied to an annual report presentation.
Take this annual report presentation for a coffee shop company. The whole design reflects the coziness of a coffee shop, from the softly filtered photos to the old fashioned font:
annual report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few annual report best practices:
Create an eye-catching cover for your report
Tell your company’s story in your annual report design by using thematic visuals, like background images and icons
Pick a decorative font for headers and pair it with a more minimalist font for body text
Look for opportunities to visualize data using infographics, charts and pictograms
Related: Our blog post with 55+ annual report templates, plus design tips and best practices.
Return to Table of Contents
3. Project Status Report Templates
Project Status Business Report Template
Communication is central in any project. Consultants, agencies and freelancers especially want to be as transparent as possible. That is why project status reports are one of the business report examples we are sharing in the article.
A project status report is crucial for communicating updates on what you’ve accomplished and what’s still pending. It also helps you flag any issues, either current or on the horizon. This helps build trust with the client.
The project status report template below communicates key information in an easy-to-understand format.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
The above template lets you alert the client if the project is:
Suffering from budget or scope creep
On track in terms of schedule
Healthy or not i.e. milestones completed on schedule, issues resolved
You can add bullet points on the second page to quickly flag key issues that are impacting project success.
Related: Our post on how to write a project management plan.
Simple Project Status Report Templates
Avoid ad-hoc emails or meetings. Use a simple project status report template to present your latest work and keep everyone on the same page, without endless back and forth.
Simple Project Status Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
The project status report below would work well for weekly updates.
This template lets you quickly provide an overview to busy stakeholders, who’ll be able to spot key project issues and progress at a glance.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Project Status Report Template PPT
Big updates might require consultants to communicate the status of a project in person. The below presentation template uses charts and data visualization to get your key points across immediately.
Clients or other stakeholders can see what’s been accomplished and when, while the last slide leaves room for what’s still pending.
business report template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few project status report best practices:
Include a summary of all important tasks currently in progress. If you have a weekly meeting with the client, this section will probably serve as the jumping-off point for your conversation.
Stakeholders should be able to tell at a glance if the project is way off schedule or there are too many unresolved issues.
Document all outstanding problems and concerns. It’s important to have a record in case you run into issues with the client later on.
Related: Our post with 30+ project plan examples plus design tips.
Return to Table of Contents
4. Budget Report Templates
This is Business 101: on a quarterly or yearly basis, you should be analyzing your budget, expenses and revenue.
A budget report typically breaks down:
The different categories of your budget
The last year or quarter’s spending for each category of your budget
Areas where you may need to cut or increase spending
Forecasts for the coming year or quarter
Business Monthly Expenses Template
A full budget report is a bit too dense to pass around a room during a meeting.
But, a visually engaging presentation or one-page summary, like the business report example below, is perfect for keeping your team and stakeholders up to speed.
Modern Monthly Budget Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
You can provide an overview of the last period’s spending by category, and highlight the amount you saved or exceeded the budget by.
For example, take a look at this summary budget report slide that uses a thematic background image to make it more engaging:
budget report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A quick summary page is also the perfect opportunity to creatively visualize data.
While tables are certainly efficient for comparing amounts spent, you could also use a more unusual visual like a bubble chart. This is because unique visuals make memorable business report examples.
budget report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Forecast Budget Template
A forecast is an essential business report that shows where a business is headed financially. It’s not a plan for the future, but rather its current short-term direction.
Use this forecast template to project your businesses’ revenue, and take appropriate action.
Modern Forecast Budget Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few budget report best practices:
Clearly label the period the report covers (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
Provide a brief description of each section of your report, to highlight important insights
Use a table to compare amounts of money saved vs. spent
Use bar charts, pie charts and bubble charts to visualize budget allotment
Highlight important insights using contrasting colors, bold fonts and icons
Return to Table of Contents
5. Nonprofit report templates
Nonprofits rely on reports to illustrate their mission and the impact they’ve had on the communities they serve.
More nonprofits are also going digital with their reports, according to the National Council for Nonprofits, making them cheaper to produce.
Nonprofit annual report examples
Done correctly, nonprofit annual reports build trust with donors. These reports should be transparent about your nonprofit’s finances and the outcomes of its work.
Make your nonprofit annual report accessible by keeping it simple to read and understand. Use unique charts to visualize data, like the half donut charts in the business report example below:
Non Profit Annual Report Example
USE THIS TEMPLATE
You can also use icons to help illustrate facts and figures:
Nonprofit Annual Report Infographic Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Colorful nonprofit annual report example
This colorful branded annual report template includes a host of icons to tell the organization’s story. The contrasting colors, pinks against black and white, make the data and information stand out. This makes the report more attractive to readers as well as more memorable.
Nonprofit Annual Report
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Nonprofit financial statement template
Nonprofit impact reports focus specifically on the charity’s accomplishments to help inspire donors, both past, current and future.
Any facts or statistics should be visualized, if possible, to make them crystal clear. Then provide additional context in the copy.
The following financial statement template uses icons to help illustrate the nonprofit’s achievements:
Company Nonprofit Financial Statement Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Related: Our complete nonprofit marketing guide, with templates.
Return to Table of Contents
6. Sales Report Templates
Modern Weekly Sales Business Report Template
If you aren’t tracking your sales on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis, it’s time to start.
Creating a sales report for different time periods can help you identify trends, as well as an opportunity for growth. Regularly reporting on your sales can also help your team stay focused on your goals.
What should be included in a sales report?
A sales report typically covers any of the following data:
An overview of sales goals and whether or not those goals are being met
Revenue and expenses
Sales forecasts for the upcoming periods (month, quarter, year)
Products and services that are selling the most and ones that are lagging
Number of leads and conversion rates for a given period
Any challenges or roadblocks
Weekly sales report template
Consider making sales reporting a segment of your weekly team meetings. You may want to provide a quick update for company-wide meetings and a more in-depth report for sales and marketing team meetings.
Here’s an example of what a quick weekly sales report could look like:
sales report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
The slide simply covers the total sales for the week and compares them to previous weeks to highlight growth.
While this sales report presentation digs deeper into KPIs (key performance indicators) and conversions:
sales report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Monthly sales report template
For a monthly, quarterly or yearly sales report, you will probably want to go more in-depth into your metrics as you plan for upcoming periods.
That said, you don’t want to produce a 62-page text-heavy document no one will read. Surprise your client or boss with a fresh new way of doing things that are engaging and concise. You’ll differentiate yourself as an innovator.
For example, the following monthly sales report template uses a variety of charts and tables to keep the data fresh:
Gradient Monthly Sales Report Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
The below sales report template will help you visualize key sales metrics using pie charts, bar graphs and tables. The weighted text and icons help organize information in an easily digestible way.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Making your sales report easily accessible will help build your reputation as someone who’s transparent and trustworthy.
A few sales report best practices:
Clearly identify the time period you are reporting on
Use descriptive section headers and include descriptions for any charts or tables that need more clarification
Provide context for readers, explain any major trends they should be aware of, any challenges your team encountered, and how the goals have been impacted
Use line charts and bar graphs to show changes over time and highlight trends
Emphasize key metrics in big, bold fonts (for example, the total sales for a given week)
Use contrasting colors to emphasize keywords or one point on a graph
Related: 5 ways to host a more successful sales demo by using images.
Return to Table of Contents
7. Digital Marketing Report Templates
Professional Digital Marketing Business Report Template
If you’re a SaaS or e-commerce business, I don’t have to tell you how important digital marketing is. It’s the thing that can make or break many small businesses.
In order to scale and grow your business, it’s important to make informed, deliberate digital marketing decisions.
That means always looking for ways to improve your search rankings, grow your social media engagement, and optimize your ad campaigns.
A ‘digital marketing report‘ is a pretty broad term for a report that could be an overview of all your digital marketing channels or one particular channel.
A digital marketing report that covers all your main marketing channels could include any (or all) of the following data:
An overview of your current digital marketing strategy
Your main marketing goals and whether or not they are being met
An overview of your conversion metrics, including the number of leads, paid vs. organic leads, and your cost per conversion
An overview of your traffic metrics, organized by channel
An SEO overview, including any changes in rankings for target keywords
An overview of PPC campaigns you’re running, including clickthrough rate, ROI and cost per click
An overview of your social media channels, including engagement metrics and leads from specific channels
For example, take a look at this digital marketing report template that dedicates one page to each channel. Note how the company’s branding has also been incorporated into the design by using the brand’s colors and visuals that reflect the computer theme:
digital marketing report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Detailed marketing reports focused on multiple channels or a broad industry can get lengthy. To save time for your clients or executives reviewing your report, make navigating your business report easy. Add simple hyperlinks to your table of contents.
In the editor, select the text you’d like to turn into a link. Then click the link icon in the top bar and choose the page it needs to link to. When the document gets shared as a PDF, readers will have clickable links!
Report ToC Example
In a digital marketing report that focuses on one specific marketing channel, you will probably want to go more in-depth into each metric.
For example, in a social media report, you should cover:
A comparison of your performance on specific social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (you could try visualizing it with a comparison infographic)
Specific engagement metrics like impressions, clicks, subscriber count, likes and comments
An overview of your followers, including demographic information like age, gender and profession
Conversion metrics from each specific social media channel
The below social media report visualizes some of these key metrics.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
As a consultant, you may be gifted in social media marketing but totally flummoxed by all things design. Look better than you are by using the above template. It’ll help you present your findings in a way that’s effective and professional, while still managing to be playful and engaging.
If you’re concerned about organizing information by channel, here’s an example of a social media marketing report presentation that uses colored columns to make it easy to scan for a specific channel’s metrics:
digital marketing report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few digital marketing report best practices:
Provide an overview of the performance of all your channels, or a particular channel
Organize your report by channel (“Organic Search”, “Social Media”, “PPC”) or by specific campaigns/projects
If your report is long enough, include a table of content to make it easier for readers to navigate your report
Use bar charts and tables to compare your performance on different marketing channels
Use icons to emphasize key information and visualize different channels (for example, different social media networks)
Try to communicate your information concisely and focus on only one topic per page or slide
Related: Our post on what is a marketing plan and how to write and design one for maximum effectiveness.
Return to Table of Contents
8. Competitor Analysis Templates
Competitor Analysis Business Report Template
Get the attention of marketers with a competitor analysis report. The best reports show exactly what a company must face off (and beat) to be successful.
A competitor analysis report usually has the following sections:
Product summary
Competitor strengths and weaknesses
Competitor strategies and objectives
Outlook: is the market growing? Flat? Splintering into niche segments?
The following competitor analysis template neatly organizes these categories into compact sections and highlights important stats. Stakeholders can quickly compare them with their own company’s numbers and get an immediate sense of how they measure up.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Using a pre-designed competitor analysis template is also a great idea for consultants who want to set themselves apart from big consulting firms or boutiques. Visualizing data is a way to set yourself apart as numbers-focused, unique and innovative, as in this business report example.
business report templates
USE THIS TEMPLATE
A few competitor analysis report best practices:
If you’re listing all competitors, add those entering the market in the next year as well as indirect competitors who sell to the same customers as yours.
Find customer satisfaction surveys for competitors (usually carried out by trade press) and include their findings.
Talk to the sales department to get a sense of the competitor’s customers.
Do informal research on the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Talk to journalists who cover this specific industry. Don’t just rely on online information.
Related: Our post on how to create a competitor analysis report (with templates).
Return to Table of Contents
9. Case Study Templates
One of the business report examples on our list is the business case study. Though not a report exactly, a case study analyzes a particular aspect of a company or a situation it faced. A consultant may need to write one as part of a corporate training program they’re developing.
Case studies usually focus on one of these situations:
Startup or early-stage venture
Merger, joint venture, acquisition
Market entry or expansion
New project or product
Pricing optimization
Profitability
Industry landscape
Growth strategy
What makes case studies unique is how they tell a story. They include background information on the company, a protagonist or key players, the situation and outcomes.
The below case study template has plenty of space for this narrative while using icons and numbers to highlight key details.
Bold Social Media Business Case Study Template
USE THIS TEMPLATE
Make sure to include a conclusion that contains your key findings. Why did the protagonist make the decisions she made? What were the outcomes? What can we learn from this? Circle back to the key question the case study raises and answer it.
Business case study template
Business case studies are usually teaching tools to show how real companies approached a particular scenario or problem. The case study usually reflects a business theory and demonstrates its real-life application.
For example, the following business case study template shows how a crafts retailer uses earned media to drive engagement-heavy traffic.
Light Simple Business Case Study Template
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
