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Sample Business Report for Students Interested in Learning APA Style 7th
Edition

Your Name (123456)

University Canada

West

MGMT 601: Business

Dr. Professor’ Name

May 31, 2021

Table of Content
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s
Executive Summary....................................................................................................................3
Introduction...............................................................................................................................4
Method......................................................................................................................................4
SWOT......................................................................................................................................5
Findings and Analysis.................................................................................................................5
Discussion..................................................................................................................................5
Recommendations......................................................................................................................6
References.................................................................................................................................7
Appendix/Appendices................................................................................................................8
Appendix A -..........................................................................................................................8
Appendix B-...........................................................................................................................8
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Executive Summary

The executive summary is an important and mandatory piece of a business report. This is the

first thing your client will read and it should summarize the key points of the report. Executive

summaries should be short and written in a clear and concise way using a professional tone.
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Introduction

Important to note that this sample paper shows a common way to format your business

report. You may be asked to include additional information not mentioned here. The best way

to ensure you have included all the elements/sections you need for your assignment is to use

the grading rubric when writing your paper and consult your instructor. In this section, you

would often start with a topic paragraph that introduces the report. A standard introduction

summarizes the key elements of the report including: background information, problem or purpose of

the report, significance, methods, recommendations.

Before getting started, you will notice some things about this paper. First, everything

is double-spaced. Second, margins are 1-inch wide on all sides, this is the default setting in

Word and Google Docs. Third, there are several headings used throughout to separate

different parts of the paper; some of the headings are in bold. Try to pay attention to all of

these details as you look through this paper. Unlike a standard paper, the headings included

here are standard for a business report and should be included in your own report.

Method

The Method section is where you will explain to the client the kind of research and data

collection that will occur. You will typically use subsections in this section to discuss the kinds

of analysis you will use: for example, SWOT, benchmarking analysis, etc. You will need to

decide what kind of research is needed and why (Kermally, 2016)

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SWOT
These subsections are separated by headings which are described in sections 2.26 and

2.27 of the APA manual (APA, 2020). Look to see how these level 2 headings appear in the table

of contents. Information about your SWOT analysis (this analysis could be replaced with any

other kind of research) and why it was conducted would be found here (Posner, 2015).

Findings and Analysis

This section may be the most difficult to write, at least until you get a little practice

with reporting statistical analyses. This is the section where the results of the data analyses are

presented. It’s often helpful to use tables (see Figure 1) to help describe your results, especially

when you have a lot of data to report.

You may find it helpful to remind the reader of the hypothesis before presenting

each result. It is also a good idea to tell the reader what type of data analysis was done (e.g.

correlation, ANOVA).

Discussion

This is the part where you interpret and explain the results found. Did the findings match

what you believed before starting your research? If not, why? Also, how do your findings fit in

with previous theory and literature? Are your results consistent or inconsistent with what has

been found in the past? If they are inconsistent, how can you explain this? The explanation

and interpretation of results will probably be the biggest part of the Discussion.
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Recommendations

The final section is the recommendation section. This section should be persuasive

and written with your clients’ needs in mind. The purpose of this section is to propose or

recommend options available to solve a problem or fill a need. This is your chance to propose

solutions based on the information you gathered. These recommendations should highlight

the befits these recommendations can create (for example: increase revenue).
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References

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American

Psychological Association (7th ed.). American Psychological Association.

Chirita, N., Visan, A. & Popescu, M. (2020). Measuring Adobe company performance from the

perspective of a complex adaptive system. Theoretical & Applied Economics, 27(4), 51-72.

Kermally, S. (2016). Marketing & economics: An integrative approach to making effective

business decisions in the global marketing world. Vernon Press.

Posner, H. (2015). Marketing fashion: Strategy, branding and promotion (2nd ed.). Laurence King

Publishing.
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Appendix/Appendices
Appendix A -
Figure 1
Forecast of Adobe stock price evolution

Note. Graph showing a forecast of Adobe stock price evolution. From “Measuring Adobe
Company performance from perspective of a Complex Adaptive System” by N. Chirita, A. Visan,
and M. Popescu, 2020, Theoretical & Applied Economics, 27(4), 51-72.

Figure 2

Appendix B-

Table 1