How to Create a Quarterly Report in Google Sheets with AI

Building your quarterly report doesn't have to be a grind spent wrestling with endless rows of data. While it's a vital task for tracking progress and planning next steps, the manual process can quickly eat up your week. This tutorial will walk you through creating a clear and insightful quarterly report in Google Sheets, but with a modern twist - using AI tools to automate the tedious parts so you can focus on the story your data is telling.

What Belongs in a Quarterly Report?

Before jumping into spreadsheets, it’s important to decide what you want to measure. A report with too many metrics is just noise, a report with too few can be misleading. A balanced quarterly report should provide a snapshot of past performance, context for that performance, and direction for the future.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Your KPIs are the most important metrics that show whether your team or business is achieving its goals. These will vary by department:

Marketing: Website Traffic, Conversion Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Leads Generated, ROI on Ad Spend.
Sales: New MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), Deals Closed, Average Deal Size, Sales Cycle Length, Lead-to-Close Rate.
E-commerce: Total Revenue, Average Order Value (AOV), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Cart Abandonment Rate.

Choose 5-7 core KPIs to be the backbone of your report. These are the numbers that your audience should remember.

Comparative Analysis

A number without context is meaningless. Is 1,000 new customers good? It depends. That’s why your report needs comparisons to add perspective:

Quarter-over-Quarter (QoQ): How did this quarter perform compared to the previous one? This shows recent momentum.
Year-over-Year (YoY): How did this quarter perform compared to the same quarter last year? This helps account for seasonality.

Highlights, Lowlights, and "The Why"

Your report should tell a story, not just list numbers. Dedicate a small section to qualitative insights. What were the big wins? Where did you fall short? Most importantly, what do you think caused these outcomes? For example, a spike in website traffic might be linked to a successful PR campaign, while a dip in sales could be related to a new competitor entering the market.

Actionable Next Steps

Finally, a good report looks forward. Based on the data, what are the top 1-3 priorities for the next quarter? This turns your report from a historical document into a strategic one, guiding decisions and resource allocation.

Setting Up Your Google Sheet For Success

A well-organized spreadsheet saves you time and prevents headaches. The best practice is to separate your raw data from your polished report. This keeps your dashboard clean and protects your source data from accidental edits.

Create a 'Raw Data' Tab: Create a new tab in your Google Sheet and name it "Raw Data." This is where you will paste your data exports from other platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, your CRM, etc. No formatting needed here - just a clean data dump.
Create a 'Report' Tab: This will be your main dashboard. It’s where you’ll build your summary tables, charts, and analysis. This is the only tab stakeholders should see.
Structure Your 'Report' Tab: Layout your KPIs cleanly. Create a simple table with headers like: Metric, This Quarter, Last Quarter, % Change (QoQ), Same Quarter Last Year, % Change (YoY).

To pull data from your "Raw Data" tab into your "Report" tab, you can use simple formulas. For example, if your total revenue is in cell E10 of your raw data sheet, you can pull it into your report with:

='Raw Data'!E10

This simple separation keeps things tidy and makes your report much easier to manage and update each quarter.

Leveraging AI Within Google Sheets

Here’s where you can save a significant amount of time. You don't need to be a spreadsheet expert anymore to perform complex analysis or create visuals. AI can help you do the heavy lifting.

Using Google's Built-in 'Explore' Feature

The 'Explore' feature is Google's native AI assistant hiding in plain sight at the bottom-right corner of your sheet (it looks like a star or speech bubble icon). It’s surprisingly powerful for getting quick insights.

Here’s how to use it:

Automatic Charts: Highlight a range of data (for example, your monthly traffic numbers). Click 'Explore,' and it will automatically suggest charts like line graphs or bar charts. You can drag and drop these recommendations directly into your sheet.
Natural Language Queries: You can ask 'Explore' questions in plain English. With your data selected, type into the search bar: "What is the average order value by traffic source?" or "bar chart of leads per month." 'Explore' will often generate the exact pivot table or chart you need in seconds.

Generating Formulas with AI Add-Ons

Struggling to remember that complex VLOOKUP or SUMIFS syntax? AI add-ons for Google Sheets can write formulas for you based on simple text descriptions. Extensions like Numerous.ai or GPT for Sheets connect your spreadsheet to AI models.

For example, instead of trying to build the formula yourself, you can just tell the add-on:

"Sum all values in column D where column B says 'Facebook Ads' and the date in column A is in the last 90 days."

The AI will generate the formula for you, saving you a trip to Google to look up syntax. This dramatically lowers the technical barrier to sophisticated analysis.

Generating Summaries with AI Prompts

After you’ve pulled all your numbers, you still need to write the narrative section. AI can help you draft this summary. Take your key findings - like "Website traffic increased by 15% QoQ, but the conversion rate decreased by 8%" - and feed them into a tool like ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.

Use a prompt like this:

"Act as a marketing analyst. Write a one-paragraph summary for a quarterly report based on these key data points: [Your data points here]. Focus on the story behind the numbers and suggest one potential reason for the drop in conversion rate."

Use the output as a first draft. It’s excellent for beating writer's block and structuring your commentary. Just be sure to review and refine it with your own human insights.

Step-by-Step Example: Building a Sales Report

Let's tie it all together with a quick example of a sales team's quarterly report.

Gather Data: Export your deal data from your CRM (like Salesforce or HubSpot) for the last two quarters and the same quarter last year. Paste this into your "Raw Data" tab.
Structure the Report: In your "Report" tab, set up a table for your sales KPIs: Deals Closed, Total Revenue, Average Deal Size, and Win Rate.
Pull KPIs with Formulas: Use a SUMIFS formula to calculate the total revenue for the current quarter.

=SUMIFS('Raw Data'!$C:$C, 'Raw Data'!$A:$A, ">="&DATE(2024,7,1), 'Raw Data'!$A:$A, "<="&DATE(2024,9,30))

This formula sums the revenue (Column C) for all deals closed in Q3 2024 (dates in Column A). Repeat for your other KPIs and previous quarters.

Calculate Percent Change: For the QoQ change, use the percentage change formula. If your current quarter's revenue is in C3 and last quarter's is in D3:

=(C3-D3)/D3

Format this cell as a percentage. This instantly shows growth or decline.

Visualize with 'Explore': Highlight the monthly sales revenue data in your Raw Data tab. Click "Explore" and ask it to "create a column chart of revenue by month." Drag the resulting chart into your report for a clear visual trend.
Add the Narrative: Once your numbers are finalized, ask an AI assistant to summarize the trends. Prompt it with something like, "Our team closed 10% more deals this quarter, but the average deal size dropped by 15%. What are some potential business reasons for this?" This helps you think critically about what a successful next quarter looks like.

Final Tips for an Effective Report

Know Your Audience: Is the report for the CEO or your team manager? Tailor the level of detail accordingly. Executives often want the high-level summary, while your team will care about the details behind the metrics.
Visualize the Most Important Data: Use charts for your primary KPIs. A line graph showing revenue over time or a pie chart breaking down lead sources is much easier to digest than a table of numbers.
Don't Hide the Bad News: A report that only shows positive trends isn't useful - it’s propaganda. Be honest about what didn't work. This builds trust and helps the team learn from its mistakes.
Turn Your Sheet into a Template: Once you’ve built your report, you can reuse the structure every quarter. Simply update the "Raw Data" tab and your formulas will automatically calculate the new results.

Final Thoughts

Creating a quarterly report in Google Sheets using AI tools elevates it from a draining chore to a truly strategic exercise. By separating your data, leveraging features like 'Explore’ and AI add-ons for analysis, and drafting summaries with AI assistance, you can build a more insightful report in half the time.

While mastering Google Sheets is invaluable, the biggest time-sink in reporting is often the very first step: manually gathering and consolidating data from all your different platforms. Instead of exporting CSV files from Google Analytics, your ad platforms, and your CRM, we built Graphed to connect to them automatically. You can just ask a question like, "Show me a quarterly MQL to Closed-Won conversion rate from HubSpot and website traffic from GA," and get a live, shareable dashboard instantly. It automates away the data wrangling so you can get straight to the insights.