How to Create a Monthly Sales Report in Tableau

Creating a monthly sales report that's actually useful can feel like a chore, but Tableau makes it easier to turn raw data into clear, actionable insights. By moving beyond static spreadsheets, you can create dynamic reports that show your team exactly what's working and where there are opportunities. This article will walk you through, step by step, how to connect your data, build the core charts for a sales report, and assemble them into an interactive Tableau dashboard.

Setting the Stage: What Makes a Good Sales Report?

Before you start dragging and dropping fields, it's important to know what you're trying to build. A great monthly sales report isn’t just a data dump, it tells a story about your team's performance. It should be clean, easy to read, and focused on the metrics that matter most.

While every business is different, most high-impact sales reports include visualizations for:

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Big, summary numbers like Total Sales Revenue, Number of Deals Won, or Average Deal Size. These give you a high-level snapshot of performance.
Sales Trends Over Time: A line chart showing revenue by month is essential for identifying seasonality, growth trends, and the impact of specific campaigns.
Performance by Category: Bar charts or maps that break down sales by region, product, or sales representative help you pinpoint top performers and areas needing attention.
Sales Funnel or Pipeline Status: Understanding deal stages and conversion rates helps with forecasting and identifying bottlenecks in the sales process.

The goal is to move from "what happened?" to "why did it happen?" and "what should we do next?". A well-designed Tableau dashboard helps answer those questions at a glance.

Step 1: Connecting Your Sales Data to Tableau

First things first, you need to bring your sales data into Tableau. Tableau can connect to a huge variety of data sources, from simple spreadsheets to complex databases.

Open Tableau Desktop. You'll be greeted with the start screen, which has a "Connect" pane on the left-hand side.
Choose your data source. Sales data often lives in a few common places:
- Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets: Perfect for smaller datasets or if you’re manually tracking sales. Under "To a File," you can select either option.
- Salesforce: Tableau has a native Salesforce connector that allows you to pull in your CRM data directly.
- SQL Databases: If your sales data is in a database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server, you can connect directly under "To a Server."

For this tutorial, let's assume your data is in a simple Excel file. Click on "Microsoft Excel," navigate to your file, and open it.

Once connected, you’ll land on the Data Source page. Here, you'll see a list of sheets from your workbook on the left. Drag the sheet containing your sales data onto the canvas that says "Drag tables here." A preview of your data will appear in the grid below. This is a good time to check that Tableau has correctly identified your data fields. For example, make sure date fields have a calendar icon and numerical "Sales" figures have a hash (#) icon. You're now ready to start building!

Step 2: Building Your Core Visualizations (Worksheets)

In Tableau, each chart or visualization you build lives on its own "worksheet." We'll create several individual worksheets and then combine them into a single dashboard.

1. The Big Number: Total Sales Revenue KPI

Let's start with a simple but powerful KPI. We want to show the total sales for the month in a large, easy-to-read format.

How to build it:

Click the "New Worksheet" tab at the bottom of the screen.
From the "Data" pane on the left, find your Sales measure and drag it to the "Text" box on the Marks card.
You'll see a number appear. Let's make it bigger and format it. Click on the "Text" box on the Marks card again, then click the three-dot button to edit the label. Increase the font size and make it bold.
To format it as currency, right-click the SUM(Sales) pill on the Marks card, choose "Format," and in the formatting pane on the left, select "Currency (Custom)" and set the decimal places to zero.
Rename your worksheet at the bottom to "Total Sales KPI."

2. The Trend Line: Monthly Sales Performance

Next, we need to see how sales are trending over time. A line chart is perfect for this.

How to build it:

Create a new worksheet.
Drag your Order Date dimension to the Columns shelf.
Drag your Sales measure to the Rows shelf.

Tableau will automatically generate a line chart. By default, it might show sales by year. To view it by month, right-click the YEAR(Order Date) pill in the Columns shelf and select "Month" (the option with the green calendar icon, which indicates it's a continuous date). Now you have a clear view of your monthly sales performance. Rename this sheet "Monthly Sales Trend."

3. The Hot Spots: Sales by Region Map

Knowing where your sales are coming from is crucial. A map is one of the most intuitive ways to visualize geographic data.

How to build it:

Create a new worksheet.
Find a geographic field in your data, like State or Country. Double-click on it. Tableau will automatically recognize it's a geographic field and create a map with a dot for each location.
To make this map more useful, drag your Sales measure and drop it onto the Color icon on the Marks card.
The map will transform into a filled map, where colors correspond to sales volume. Typically, darker shades indicate higher sales.

Now you can immediately see your top-performing regions. Rename this sheet "Sales by Region."

4. The Heavy Hitters: Top Products by Sales

What products are driving the most revenue? A simple horizontal bar chart is the clearest way to show this.

How to build it:

Create a new worksheet.
Drag the Product Name dimension to the Rows shelf.
Drag the Sales measure to the Columns shelf.
Tableau creates a bar chart. To make it more reader-friendly, click the sort icon in the toolbar at the top to sort your products in descending order based on sales.

You can now easily see your best-selling items at a glance. Rename this sheet to "Top Products."

Step 3: Assembling Your Monthly Sales Dashboard

With your individual worksheets created, it’s time to bring them all together into a professional dashboard.

Click the "New Dashboard" icon at the bottom of the screen (it looks like a grid).
This opens a blank canvas. On the left, you'll see a list of all the worksheets you just created.
Start dragging your worksheets onto the canvas. A good layout practice is to place your main KPIs at the top, followed by trends, and then more detailed breakdowns below. Drag the "Total Sales KPI" to the top, the "Monthly Sales Trend" below it, and then arrange the "Sales by Region" map and "Top Products" bar chart side-by-side at the bottom. Tableau will automatically snap them into place using a tiled layout.
Resize the containers as needed by hovering over the borders between charts and dragging them until the layout looks clean and balanced.

Step 4: Making Your Report Interactive with Filters

This is where Tableau really shines. A static report is fine, but an interactive one empowers your team to explore the data and find their own insights.

Add a Cross-Chart Filter:

Let's make it so that clicking on the map filters the entire dashboard.

Select the "Sales by Region" map on your dashboard.
In the top right corner of its container, you'll see a small funnel icon that says "Use as Filter." Click it.

That's it! Now, when a user clicks on a state, like Texas, all the other charts on the dashboard — the total sales KPI, the trend line, and the top products chart — will instantly update to show data for Texas only. This is a powerful way to drill down into the data with a single click.

Add a Date Range Filter:

You’ll also want to give users the ability to select the specific time frame they are interested in.

Go to one of your worksheets, like the "Monthly Sales Trend" sheet.
Drag Order Date from the Data pane to the Filters card.
A window will pop up. Choose "Range of Dates" and click "Next." Then click "OK."
Right-click the Order Date pill that just appeared in the Filters card and select "Show Filter." A date range filter will now appear on the right side of your worksheet.
Now go back to your dashboard tab. Select the container for the "Monthly Sales Trend" chart. Click the small dropdown arrow at the top right, go to Filters, and select the Order Date filter you just created.

The date filter will now appear directly on your dashboard. You can drag it to a convenient spot and users can now adjust the slider to see sales performance for a specific month, quarter, or any custom date range.

Final Thoughts

Building a monthly sales report in Tableau doesn't need to be an overwhelming process. By following these steps to connect your data, create targeted worksheets for your key metrics, and combine them into an interactive dashboard, you can build a powerful tool that transforms raw sales data into business intelligence.

While Tableau is an amazing tool for those willing to learn it, we know the learning curve can be steep for busy teams. We created Graphed to remove that friction completely. We allow you to connect all your marketing and sales data sources — from Salesforce to Shopify to Google Analytics — and then create real-time dashboards simply by describing what you want to see. Instead of manually building charts and filters, you can just ask, "Show me my sales revenue by region last month," and get an interactive report in seconds, not hours.