Since 2005, the backbone of FRA has been the country reporting process where the best available and most recent information from all countries and territories is compiled and analyzed.

FAO requests all countries submit a comprehensive report following a standardized format and methodology. Reports are prepared by officially nominated national correspondents and submitted to FAO.

For FRA 2015, there were two options for submitting the reports: either via email as a Microsoft Word document or via the Forest Resources Information Management System (FRIMS), which is an online portal for FRA 2015 data entry. Country reports were reviewed by members of the FRA team. Once the review was completed, countries were asked to double check any changes made. Afterwards, the final country reports were sent to the Head of Forestry for confirmation and publication.