What does an annual report cost?
⏲ Read time: 3 minutes
OnlineReports gives full control over the reporting process, with fewer external steps, lower costs and a process that minimises the risk of errors. At the same time, it paves the way for more dynamic communication, beyond static PDF archives.
When a listed company budgets for its annual report, it is usually the agency fee that ends up in the calculation. That is a natural starting point, since it is the cost that appears on an invoice, but it only shows part of the picture. The real cost is made up of several steps, both external and internal, and is often spread across several budgets in finance, IR and communications. As a result, few companies have a clear view of what the report costs as a whole.
The cost follows the production chain
In a traditional process, content passes through a long chain of systems and processes. The figures are prepared in Excel, the text is written in Word, the material is typeset in InDesign, proofreading is handled in CtrlPrint, and the report is finally published as a PDF. Several of these steps require external resources for typesetting, proofreading and publishing, and every handover between them costs either external hours or internal waiting time.
Some items tend to weigh particularly heavily. Tables and charts are often rebuilt by hand by consultants, and because the work is based on the source data, it is billed again every time the figures change. Late changes become expensive for the same reason: once the material has been typeset, even a minor correction affects the layout, and the change lands with the agency at the stage when time pressure is greatest. For companies that report in several languages, translation is added on top, including the proofreading needed to ensure that the figures are identical across all language versions.
Internal time and work that is redone every year
On top of the external costs comes internal time, which is rarely counted because it is not invoiced. Finance, IR and communications teams often spend a significant share of their time on reconciliations, layout issues and logistics rather than on content, and they do so during the year-end closing period, when their time is most valuable.
Over time, however, the most costly part is that the design and structural work is redone for every report. The setup, spread design and table structure are often produced and billed again each season, even though the result largely matches the previous year's. What should reasonably be a one-time investment thus becomes a recurring cost.
How OnlineReports changes the cost picture
OnlineReports brings production together in a web-based platform where the report is created, reviewed and published in the same environment, both as a web report and as a PDF from the same content. When several steps in the chain disappear, a large share of the external costs disappears with them. The company's visual identity is built into the platform, which reduces dependence on an agency for typesetting and layout. Tables and charts are created and updated automatically in all languages through the connection to Excel and the consolidation system, so consultant hours for table and chart work fall away. Late changes can be made internally without disrupting the layout, and translation files are handled directly in the platform. Because the report is cloned from the previous year and built on a ready-made, reusable template structure, the repeated groundwork is eliminated entirely from year to year.
Even in the first year, when the structure is being established, our clients' costs typically land at around 80 percent of a traditional agency process. From year two, when the report is cloned and the template structure is reused, production costs fall to around 40 percent, while the platform licence fully replaces the need for CtrlPrint and InDesign. Over three reporting cycles, the total cost is therefore just over half of what three traditional productions would have cost.
In addition to the direct costs, internal time is freed up through fewer transitions between tasks, a uniform format for text, tables and charts, and variables that reduce duplicate writing. We have described how the workflow looks in practice in the article "How to speed up the annual report". And because the report is also published in HTML, it becomes easier for both search engines and AI tools to find and analyse.
Calculating the cost of your own report
Ahead of the next reporting cycle, it may be worth compiling what the report actually cost, not just what the agency invoice came to. A reasonable starting point is to add up typesetting and layout, consultant hours for tables and charts, changes after typesetting, and translation including proofreading, and then add an estimate of the internal hours. If you would like to compare the result with a production in OnlineReports, we can prepare a calculation based on your company's latest report. The same reusable templates and structure can also lay the foundation for significantly more efficient interim reporting.
Contact us at info@onlinereports.se.
