How to Create a Monthly Report in Power BI

Creating monthly reports is an essential part of business, but the process of building them is often manual and time-consuming. Instead of battling with static spreadsheets and outdated presentations, you can build a dynamic, automated report in Power BI. This article will walk you through the process step-by-step, from connecting your data to publishing an interactive dashboard.

First, A Quick Word: Preparing for Your Report

Before jumping into Power BI, it helps to have a clear idea of what you want to build. Ask yourself a few key questions:

• Who is this report for? A report for the CEO will look very different from one for your digital marketing team. The audience determines the level of detail and the metrics that matter most.

• What questions should this report answer? Start with the end goal. Are you trying to track sales performance against targets? Understand marketing campaign ROI? Monitor website traffic trends? Clear questions lead to a clear report.

• What are the 3-5 most important metrics (KPIs)? Don't try to cram every possible data point onto one page. Focus on the key performance indicators that give a clear snapshot of performance at a glance. Common examples include Total Revenue, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Conversion Rate, or Leads Generated.

Once you have a rough sketch of your goals, you can start building.

Phase 1: Connect and Clean Your Data

The foundation of any good report is clean, reliable data. Power BI can connect to hundreds of different data sources, from simple Excel files to complex enterprise databases. For this tutorial, let's assume we're working with a common scenario: sales data exported as a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Get Data into Power BI

Open Power BI Desktop. From the Home tab on the ribbon, click Get Data. You’ll see a list of common data sources. If yours isn't there, click More… to see the full list.

Let's select Excel workbook and navigate to our sales data file. Once selected, Power BI will show you a Navigator window where you can choose which sheets or tables from the file you want to import. Check the box next to your data table (don't just click load!) and then click Transform Data. This opens the Power Query Editor, which is where the real data prep happens.

Step 2: Clean and Shape Your Data in Power Query

The Power Query Editor is a powerful tool for cleaning up messy data without changing your original source file. Every step you take is recorded and can be modified or undone later.

Here are a few essential cleaning tasks for a typical monthly sales report:

• Check Data Types: Power BI usually guesses data types correctly, but it's worth checking. Make sure your numerical columns (like Sales Amount or Quantity) are formatted as numbers (Whole Number or Decimal Number) and your Order Date is a Date type. Just click the icon on the left of the column header to change it.

• Remove Unnecessary Columns: Your report only needs relevant data. If you have columns you won't use, right-click the header and select Remove. This makes your data model smaller and faster.

• Create Supporting Columns: For monthly reporting, date components are crucial. To easily group by month and year, you can create new columns from your date field. Select the Order Date column, go to the Add Column tab, click Date, and then select Month > Name of Month. Repeat the process for Year > Year. Now you have dedicated columns for "Month" and "Year" to use in your visuals.

When you're happy with your data's shape, click Close & Apply in the top-left corner. Power BI will load the cleaned data into your report model.

Phase 2: Build Your Visuals

Now for the fun part: turning that data into a visual story. We'll start with big-picture numbers and then add charts for trends and breakdowns.

Step 1: Add KPI Cards for Headline Metrics

Every report needs headline numbers that immediately tell the reader how things are going. The Card visual is perfect for this.

In the Visualizations pane, click the Card icon (it looks like 123). Drag a key metric like Sales Amount onto the "Fields" area for the visual. Power BI will automatically show the total sum. You can format it by clicking the paintbrush icon, making the text bigger, and changing the title under "General."

Create a few more cards for your main KPIs, like Number of Orders or Unique Customers. Arrange them neatly at the top of your report page.

Step 2: Show Trends with a Line Chart

Monthly reports are all about tracking performance over time. A line chart is the best way to show this.

• Click on a blank space on your canvas, then select the Line chart visual.

• Drag your Order Date field to the X-axis.

• Drag your primary metric, like Sales Amount, to the Y-axis.

Power BI will automatically create a hierarchy for the date (Year, Quarter, Month, Day). You can click the drill-down arrows on the visual to explore the data at different levels of granularity.

Step 3: Break Down Performance with a Bar Chart

Where are your sales coming from? A bar or column chart helps answer this question.

Select the Stacked column chart visual from the pane. Drag a categorical field like Product Category or Region to the X-axis and Sales Amount to the Y-axis. This instantly shows you which categories are driving the most revenue.

Step 4: Create a Simple Month-Over-Month Calculation with DAX

To make your report even more insightful, you can add context with comparisons, like Month-over-Month (MoM) growth. You’ll need a bit of DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), Power BI’s formula language.

First, you need a calendar table to handle time-intelligence functions properly. On the Data view tab, go to Table tools > New table and enter this simple DAX formula:

Replace 'YourTableName' with the actual name of your data table. Then, go to the Model view and create a relationship by dragging the Date field from your new Dates table onto the Order Date field in your sales data table.

Now, let's create a measure for MoM sales growth. Right-click on your sales table and select New Measure:

After creating this measure, click on it in the Fields pane and change its format to a Percentage using the Measure tools tab. Now you can add this MoM Sales Growth % measure to a Card visual to display this key insight prominently.

Phase 3: Add Interactivity and Polish

A static report is informational, but an interactive report is empowering. Slicers allow users to filter the report and explore the data on their own.

The most important slicer for a monthly report is a date filter.

1. Click the Slicer icon in the Visualizations pane.

2. Drag the Date field from your calendar table (Dates) into the "Field" well.

3. By default, it may appear as a slider. In the slicer's formatting options, under Slicer settings > Style, you can change it to a Dropdown list for easier month selection.

Now, anyone viewing your report can select a specific month or date range, and all the visuals on the page will instantly update.

Finally, add a title to your report using a Text Box, adjust the colors and fonts under the View tab to match your company branding, and ensure all your visuals are aligned and easy to read.

Phase 4: Publish and Automate Your Report

Once your report is built in Power BI Desktop, you need to share it with your team. This is done through the Power BI Service (the web-based version).

Step 1: Publish Your Report

From the Home tab in Power BI Desktop, click Publish. You will be prompted to save your changes and then select a workspace in the Power BI Service to publish to. "My Workspace" is your personal sandbox, but you'll likely want to publish to a shared workspace so your team can access it.

Step 2: Schedule an Automatic Refresh

This is the best part: no more manual updates. In the Power BI Service, navigate to the workspace where you published your report. Find your dataset (it will have the same name as your file), click the three dots (...), and go to Settings.

Here, you'll need to enter the credentials for your data source so Power BI can access it on its own. After that, look for the Scheduled refresh section. You can turn it on and set a schedule - for example, daily at 8 AM. Now, your report will automatically update every day with the latest data, with no effort required on your part.

Final Thoughts

By following these steps, you've transformed a tedious manual task into a dynamic, automated reporting system. Power BI helps you build monthly reports that are not only informative but also interactive, empowering your team to explore data and uncover insights on their own time.

As powerful as tools like Power BI are, they often come with a significant learning curve. You still have to manage data models, write DAX formulas, and design the layout. If you need clean, live reports without the heavy lifting, we built Graphed to simplify this entire process. You connect your data sources in a few clicks, then just describe the report you want in plain English - like "create a monthly report showing our sales from Shopify vs. ads spend on Facebook" - and our AI builds it for you in seconds.