In writing, a report is a document characterized by information or other content reflective of inquiry or investigation, which is tailored to the context of a given situation and audience. The purpose of reports is usually to inform. However, reports may include persuasive elements, such as recommendations, suggestions, or other motivating conclusions that indicate possible future actions the report reader might take. Reports can be public or private, and often address questions posed by individuals in government, business, education, and science. Reports often take the structure of scientific investigation: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRAD). They may sometimes follow a problem-solution structure based on the audience's questions or concerns. As for format, reports range from a simpler format with headings to indicate topics, to more complex formats including charts, tables, figures, pictures, tables of contents, abstracts, summaries, appendices, footnotes, hyperlinks, and references.

Types of reports include:

scientific reports, recommendation reports, white papers, annual reports, auditor's reports, workplace reports, census reports, trip reports, progress reports, investigative reports, budget reports, policy reports, demographic reports, credit reports, appraisal reports, inspection reports, military reports, etc.

Many textbooks discuss reports in greater detail. See Gerso minority report, final report, majority report, environmental recourt reports, error and other reports from software systems, etc. n/Gerson's "Technical Writing: Process and Product," Lannon's "Technical Communication," and Blicq's "Technically—Write."

Enterprise reporting

With the dramatic expansion of information technology, and the desire for increased competitiveness in corporations, there has been an increase in the use of computing power to produce unified reports which join different views of the enterprise in one place. Termed Enterprise Reporting, this process involves querying data sources with different logical models to produce a human readable report. One example would be to query the Human Resources databases and the Capital Improvements databases to show how efficiently space is being used across an entire corporation.

Enterprise Reporting is a fundamental part of the larger movement towards improved Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.

Often implementation involves Extract, Transform and Load (See ETL) procedures into a reporting data warehouse and then use of one or more reporting tools. While reports can be distributed in print form or via email, they are typically accessed via a corporate intranet.

See also

• BIRT Project, for open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools
• Customer Relationship Management
• Data quality
• Enterprise Application Integration
• Enterprise Resource Planning
• Decision Support System
• Global Reporting Initiative
• Management Information Systems