Thursday, January 8, 2009

It's Annual Reports Season Again

I’ve already received my first annual report form and I know from my calendar system that other states have early annual reporting requirements. Most states require an annual report to be filed, some states require semi-annual reports. The vast majority of the annual reports require information about loans that you closed in the previous year. There are also reporting requirements in some states requesting information about the loan officers that you hired and fired in the last quarter or last year.

If this is your first year filing an annual report in a particular state, it may take you awhile to gather the information that the report asks for. So don’t wait until the last minute to review the report to see what information you need to find. If you have filed a report in prior years, you should have your computers and files stored in such a way that you can access the needed data in minutes (if you don’t, maybe you want to update your technology).

Some of the annual reports require financial information in their format, not your accountants’ format, which means that you are spending a lot of time manipulating the numbers to conform to the categories that your state has on its form. If this is not your area of expertise, hire an outside specialist to handle it for you. Your time is better spent closing loans than puzzling how to complete a form.

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