How to Cite an Annual Report in APA Referencing

An annual report is a company’s yearly financial report to its stakeholders. It details its operations and commercial information from the previous year. Annual reports particularly interest shareholders since they allow them to analyze a company’s financial performance before they make investment decisions.

But what does all this mean for you? Whether your research involves general financial practices or those of specific businesses, you may need to cite data from an annual report. In this post, we’ll cover the basics of how to cite an annual report in the text and present it in your reference list using APA style.

In-Text Citations for an Annual Report

Citing an annual report in the text is similar to citing a book or website. For parenthetical citations – when the author doesn’t appear in the sentence – follow the quote from the report with the author (most likely the organization) and the publication year, both in the same set of parentheses. For narrative citations – when the author appears in the sentence – follow the author’s name with the publication year in parentheses. For example:

Annual Reports in an APA Reference List

When creating your reference list, make sure you include all the required information:

●  Organization or author

●  Year of publication

●  Title of the annual report (italicized)

●  DOI or URL

Note that for print reports (rather than online reports), you should include the report number and publisher if available. However, the publisher of annual reports is almost always the organization itself. You can omit the publisher to avoid redundancy if this is the case.

The organizations most likely to release annual reports are government agencies and private corporations. The report’s author is often the corporation or agency itself, but not always. If a report has 20 authors or fewer, give the surname and initials of all 20, with the final name preceded by an ampersand (&). Here is an example using four authors:

For more than 20 authors, give the first 19 names followed by an ellipsis (…), and provide the final author’s name after the ellipsis.

The format for reference-list entries for an annual report from a private company or government agency is therefore:

The Coffee Spot example cited above would appear as:

First-Rate Academic Proofreading

Whether you’re writing a short essay or a dissertation, your work isn’t complete unless you properly cite all your sources. To read more, check out our tips on how to format your reference page and in-text citations using APA style.