How to Prepare an Annual Report in Malaysia

In this guide, we’ll give you some tips on how to prepare an annual report in Malaysia.

A company annual report in Malaysia gives shareholders, stakeholders, the media, and the community of the financial and overall health of a company. An annual report also serves as an important marketing tool to promote your company. It is necessary to start designing and preparing the contents of an annual report in the first three months of every year.

The process to prepare an annual report lasts about two months. Drafting the annual report contents to take up the majority of the time. The business annual report should then be ready by April for companies to present its achievement in the previous year.

Read on to understand what to include in an annual report.

All Companies should Know How to Prepare an Annual Report

Not only large companies or listed companies can create an annual report. A tailor-made annual report can help small and medium-sized companies to reach certain objectives. For example, when negotiating for bank financing, an annual report of a company can be of help. Furthermore, it’s a good approach to building trust with clients, suppliers, and distributors.

Regardless of whether it is mandatory, it is extremely valuable for companies to analyze their performance and results in the previous year. Better, coming up with an annual report to showcase the analysis and results to investors and clients. Therefore, it is tremendously useful to understand how to prepare an annual report and how it works. From the report, a company will know what aspects of the business have performed well; any strategies that the company can implement to improve the results.

The Process to Prepare an Annual Report

A good annual report should give clear information about the company and its performance. It must have a well-defined structure with contents that interest the investors and shareholders. It must also have its objective, with essential information from experts, directors, shareholders, and key management. Here are some tips on how to write an annual report:

Know the audiences

In general, an annual report has five main types of audiences: shareholders, investors, analysts, employees, clients, and media.

In the case of large companies, they often have a greater number of diverse audiences. As a result, it is common for them to collect many types of annual results and data from different aspects. So the annual report contents could be longer and with more complex formats.

On the other hand, a small company’s target audience may be just customers and suppliers. Therefore, sometimes a shorter version of the annual report will suffice that includes all relevant information.

Define the content

Annual report contents include the following key elements:

Outline and Scope: Overview of the organization’s structure and operations. It should also consist of the annual report outline and scope. In other words, to tell readers what the annual report covers and what it intends to do.

Vision and strategy: Description of the organization’s strategy, including a statement from the company’s chairman or CEO. This often goes together with the annual report’s introduction.

Governance structure and management systems: Description of the organizational structure, policies, and management systems. It shall include commitments to social agents, economics, and administrations.

Corporate sustainability policy: Statements of what economic, environmental, and social impacts the company could bring. Writing a sustainability policy is important but many companies often overlook it – the result can be detrimental to their business. Businesses nowadays only can be sustainable when they are socially, environmentally, and economically responsible. (We’ll write about ‘what are the key elements of a sustainability statement’ in our next article. Stay tuned!)

3. Involves all levels of the organization

The process to prepare an annual report can only be successful when it involves all personnel related to the annual report writing. These people will have to provide information about the relevant scope.

This group of personnel in helping to generate an annual should be made up of those responsible for communications, financial division, general secretariat and management control departments, and other necessary units. Coordination of this team is essential to ensure that all relevant information comes together in this report.

Prepare an Annual Report: The Production

The abovementioned phase is more about collecting information and writing. A production phase eats up more of your time due to the editing, designing, and printing involved. If you choose to do any of the two phases in-house, you need to be extremely cautious.

This is because messing one of these two phases you can ruin your entire annual report creation. (If you’re unsure of how to write an annual report, our annual report writing services can be of assistance.)

When it comes to the production stage to prepare an annual report, you shall pay attention to the below points:

Creativity

Your creative team needs a clear annual report writing guide and style guide to prepare an annual. With that guideline, your team can reflect all requirements in the writing and design seamlessly.

Oftentimes, the annual report design is of secondary importance; what is important is the content. Especially when you want to reach a specific group of people with your annual report – content can achieve the results you want but not design. However, you still need graphics and designs that go well with content writing.

Printing

This part costs the most to prepare an annual report. And the prices can range greatly from how many copies you print; the ink you use; the quality of the paper; if the annual report is in color or two-tone.

A Final Note on How to Prepare an Annual Report of a Company

We’re almost at the end of this insightful guide. Here is something for your final takeaway:

1. Cover

Our experts recommend that a simple cover will be enough. The cover has the company logo, the company name, and the year it corresponds to.

2. Index of Content Menu

It’s usually one page. It details the main chapters, as well as the annexes (income statement, audit, etc.) if any.

3. Letter or Statement from the President

The statement should be about making a positive change for the company. He or she shall also recognize some of the obstacles that the company faces upon closing the financial year.

Ideally, a president or a CEO of the company should sign at the bottom of the letter. Alternatively, it can be just a summary with similar content, but without a signature.

4. Company/group structure

If the company is a subsidiary of a parent company; or the company has subsidiaries; it is advisable to detail the structure of the company or group.

5. Basic data

Profits and losses
Benefits
Human Resources
Own Resources

6. Business revenues

It depends on the volume of sales. If there are no business activities, an annual report can have forecasts for future years.

7. The number of employees

It will be a better idea to list the names of key employees with their titles and departments/divisions.

8. Business Activities

It will include the company’s economic activities, as well as in areas such as HR, environment sustainability, social responsibility, etc.

9. Management Report

Analysis of the company of the closed financial year. The report often outlines the company’s strategy for the coming year in one or two paragraphs at the end.

10. The address of the registered office, contact numbers, fax, and emails.

If there is more than one location, preferably to list them all as well.

Word Philocaly Is Your Copywriter to Prepare an Annual Report in Malaysia

Crafting content for your annual report is the most important part of the entire process. You need outstanding content to pull everything together. In other words, once you have proper planning and contents in place, everything else such as images and colors will come together.

Word Philocaly has an annual report checklist to guide you through every step of the way of writing an annual report – on time and budget.

The team at Word Philocaly is here to help. We are always happy to help you with our annual report writing services in Malaysia. We also provide annual report design services. Get in contact today to get a FREE consultation or your annual report checklist.