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Because there is such a wide range of reports that serve different purposes, your faculty will generally have guidelines that they want you to follow. As a general rule, however, this page and the following (Parts of the report) should give you some indication of what to include in a formal report.
This is a covering letter which is sent with the report to the person or organisation that requested the report. (Your assignment may not require you to provide this with your report.)
The title page of your report should include the report's title (this will usually be either the assignment topic or a title of your own based on the assignment topic), the date of submission, the name of the person to whom the report is being submitted, and your name and student number.
The executive summary is a brief summary of your report. It should state in clear, concise language the topic of the report, the main areas discussed, the conclusions you have drawn and any recommendations you have made. There is more information on writing an executive summary elsewhere on this site.
The table of contents lists the major headings and sub-headings in your report and the page numbers on which they appear. It is particularly useful for long reports, enabling the reader to see at a glance what the report contains and move easily from section to section. Most word processing programs are able to generate a table of contents for you automatically. You may want to search the 'help' function of your program for instructions on how to do this.
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