The annual report of a company is its financial report of a period, usually a year, that provides a summary of the company as well as its performance over the financial period. This annual report is a critical document for the company, as a good report can help keep the existing stakeholders and attract new ones. When a stakeholder considers investing or reinvesting in a company or seeks other information, he/she gets hold of the company’s annual financial report.

The cover page also referred to as the title page, of the annual report, holds great significance. The cover page is the first page of the report which holds the basic information about the company as well as the summary of the inside financial report. The annual report cover page, generally, includes the following details:

• Company name
• Company logo and slogan/tagline
• Company address
• Company’s contact details and/or website
• Report title
• Financial year
• Authors/Editors/Compilers
• Authors’ titles.
• Completion date
• A concise summary of the report

As the cover page, usually, is the first thing that is glanced at by the viewer, it signifies its importance. In addition to that, if the cover page is attractive and informative, it might push the stakeholders to go through the whole report. On the contrary, if the cover page is not successful in generating the stakeholder’s interest, he/she might just discard the report without going into the details. If the stakeholder is an investor, in this case, it might mean a loss of potential finances for the company.

Therefore, when a cover page is being prepared, many points should be considered, such as:

• The cover page should be formal and professional.
• It should provide comprehensive information that a stakeholder might need and get attracted to and yet, the information overload and clustering should be avoided.
• If any graphics, colors, or different fonts are being used, the formal look should not be compromised.
• The cover page should match the company image.
• The summary or concise description presented on the cover page needs to be interesting and persuasive as well and it should reflect that the inside pages provide information about the financial performance and standing of the company.
• It should give an idea of regarding what the report is all about.

When designing the annual report cover page, a company has two main options, either to opt for an available template or to design the cover page from scratch. Using the available templates from programs, such as Microsoft Word, or the online ones, saves time and energy, as the designing part gets limited and the templates can be easily customized and modified as per the requirements of the company.

No matter how the cover page is prepared, it should serve its purpose of attracting a stakeholder to the company as well as wooing him to read and view the whole report.

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