As an investor relations manager, communicating with investors is an important part of your job. It’s how you keep them updated on their investments’ performances.
However, gathering, organizing, and distributing this information can take a lot of time. That’s why most general partners (GPs) and IR managers have established processes for investor reporting.
What is investor reporting?
Investor reporting refers to the ongoing tasks of updating LPs on the performance and status of their investments.
This can involve sharing financial statements, project and asset reports, distribution data, occupancy rate data, and any other relevant documents. The goal is to be transparent about the investment to secure investors’ trust and confidence.
After all, LPs may have a lot of capital at stake. They deserve to know how it is being used and what their returns look like.
However, reporting isn’t just about efficiently creating each report. It’s about making the entire reporting process efficient—from creating the reports to generating and distributing them.
Sometimes, half the headache is just sending each report to hundreds of investors. That’s why having a comprehensive solution that unifies the entire process is critical. For example, Agora lets you say goodbye to one-by-one distribution and send all reports with one click instead.
Common investor report examples
While investor reports vary from firm to firm, here are some of the most common ones:
Quarterly reports. These are issued every three months to update investors on a property’s or fund’s performance, operational activities, and overall financial health. They can include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow summaries.
Annual reports. These are issued once per year to provide a comprehensive overview of a fund or property. Among other things, they can include performance summaries, property valuations, and market forecasts.
Capital account statements. These inform investors of their share of an investment over a specified period. For example, they can detail an investor’s opening balance, contributions, distributions, and ending balance.
What should an investor report include?
An investor report can include many elements:
| Investment details | Location, size, type, number of units, any unique features |
| Financial statements | Income statements, profit and loss statements, cash flow analysis, cap rate |
| Return metrics | Return on investment (ROI), internal rate of return (IRR), equity multiple, cash-on-cash return |
| Market analysis | Market trends, property comparables (comps), population growth, job growth, average rent |
| Risk assessment | Statistics on potential market downturns, tenant defaults, and unexpected operating expenses |
| Property management overview | Occupancy rates, tenant turnover, and maintenance issues |
| Compliance and legal information | Local building codes, zoning regulations, and other legal requirements |
| Corporate governance | Rules, practices, and processes by which real estate investments are directed and controlled |
| Future projections | Forecasts for future rental income, operating expenses, and property value (appreciation) |
Common challenges in investor reporting
Although investor reporting typically happens quarterly (and isn’t part of daily operations), it remains one of the most manual, time-consuming, and high-stakes parts of a firm’s operations.
Firms often juggle spreadsheets, Word documents, and PDFs just to prepare quarterly reports and capital account statements, leading to:
- Time wasted on manual, fragmented reporting. Every quarter means hours spent updating Excel, copying into Word, and emailing each report manually. It’s slow, tedious, and hard to scale.
- Data required to create reports is completely scattered across different excel spreadsheets, platforms, and PDFs.
- Lack of best practices. Smaller firms often don’t know what industry-standard reporting looks like, leading to non-professional-looking reports.
- Lack of transparency for investors. Subpar reporting leads to a lack of clarity and professionalism that can damage investor trust.
- High risk of human error. Manual reporting processes can lead to data entry mistakes, inaccurate reporting, and potential liabilities.
- Not scalable. The more your investor base and portfolio grow, the longer reporting takes—unless you leverage scalable reporting software.
Best practices for reporting investor updates
To make the most of your investor reports, follow these best practices:
Use a comprehensive reporting system
Instead of manually transferring data between different software platforms, invest in an all-in-one reporting solution like Agora. It automatically syncs property performance data with your reports so you can update investors at any time with the click of a button.
Get started with professional templates
Thanks to modern reporting tech, GPs and investor relations managers no longer need to build every update from scratch. Pre-built, expert-designed templates can dramatically reduce manual effort, save time, and give your reports a professional look.
Keep them consistent
Whether you answer to tens or hundreds of investors, keep your reports consistent. This not only fosters accountability and trust but helps optimize workflows. A standardized investor relations report template—even if it is customized to each investor—can save you valuable time.
In addition, maintain a steady reporting cadence. Annual, quarterly, and monthly reports should be delivered on a predictable schedule so investors know what to expect.
Give a complete picture
To further improve your investor reports, make them comprehensive. Each should cover:
| Highlights and lowlights | Report the latest investment milestones and challenges. |
| Financials and KPIs | Summarize the latest financial statements and investment return metrics. |
| Project wins | Share any recent leases signed, renewed, or improved. |
| Key hires | Announce any new team members, such as fund, asset, or property managers. |
| Asks | Request any capital contributions, approval for new investments, budget increases, or changes to the investment strategy. |
How can technology facilitate investor reporting?
Fortunately, modern tech can streamline investor reporting. Here’s how:
Automation
Whether it’s an online report builder or a fully-fledged investor relations management platform, automation tools can be a major time-saver.
For example, they can gather investment data and organize documents for you for each investor’s individual report. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models can automate many manual processes.
Communication
With the right investor relations software, you can have reports sent out at regular predetermined intervals, never missing a deadline.
For example, Agora lets you import bulk documents to automatically match and send Schedule K-1s and other documents to investors.
Plus, automating investor communication can reduce human errors that crop up from calculating numbers by hand or relying on scattered spreadsheets.
Document management
Though keeping track of files can be challenging, document management software makes it easy by doing the heavy lifting for you.
For example, Agora lets you upload documents in bulk and then identifies, sorts and assigns them by investor name, document type, and entity. It also lets you quickly find documents with advanced search and filtering capabilities and gives you control over what documents are visible to each investor.
Efficiency
Ultimately, leveraging modern tech can make investor reporting more efficient. The time and effort saved from tedious tasks can then be redirected to other work, such as business growth and development.
Investor reporting trends
Now that you know what investor reporting involves, here are some industry trends to consider:
Investors expect more transparency
In today’s digital age, people are accustomed to abundant information access. Investors are no different. They expect to stay informed on the status of their investment throughout its lifecycle. As a GP, you can provide this information via regular reports and an online investor portal.
Making the case for long-term value creation
Real estate is a popular long-term investment. But now that commercial property values are taking a dip, investors are especially sensitive to investment performance. They want to know that despite short-term losses, their capital will grow well into the future.
A shift towards digital reporting
While real estate has lagged behind other industries in terms of digital innovation, the days of paper reports are quickly dwindling. Many investors now expect to get updates via email and online investor relations portals and dashboards.
How Agora can help with the investor reporting process
Ready to take your investor reporting to the next level? Agora can help.
Our Report Builder is the first of its kind in the real estate industry and makes it easier for firms to create custom reports for investors and optimize back-office processes. The Report Builder is highly customizable, so you can easily create all your investor reports including Distribution Notices, Quarterly Reports, Capital Account Statements, and more on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis, as needed.
You are also able to create reports with tables, text, images, dividers, and a range of other dynamic fields. Each auto-populates with data tailored to specific investor profiles while letting you further customize the content and appearance to your liking. For example, the report builder lets you add your logo, colors, and style to each report, thereby elevating your professional image and brand.
To see how Agora’s Report Builder can improve your investor relations, consider booking a demo today!
Conclusion
Ultimately, effective investor reporting is part science and part art. Among other things, it requires efficient workflows, data accuracy, and visual appeal. However, with the right investor relations software, you can have all of the above.
