Building a quarterly sales by territory report is a fundamental way to understand your business, showing you where you're winning and which regions might need more support. This post walks you through exactly how to create that report in Looker, from preparing your data to visualizing the results, so you can see your sales performance clearly.

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First Things First: Why Track Sales by Territory?

Before jumping into Looker, it’s helpful to understand what makes a territory report so valuable. It’s more than just a table of numbers, it’s a strategic tool. A well-built report helps you:

• Measure Performance: Easily compare sales revenue across different regions to see which territories are meeting or exceeding expectations and which are falling behind.
• Allocate Resources Effectively: Are your top-performing territories getting enough support? Are underperforming regions receiving too much or too little investment? The data helps you make smarter decisions about where to spend time and money.
• Spot Regional Trends: See how seasonality or market changes affect different territories. Maybe sales in the Northeast spike in Q4, while the Southwest is steadier year-round. These insights are vital for accurate forecasting.
• Identify Growth Opportunities: A territory that’s showing consistent quarter-over-quarter growth, even if it’s currently small, might be your next big market. This report helps you find those hidden gems.

Getting Your Data Ready for Looker

Looker can only report on the data it has access to. Before you can build anything, you need to ensure the right data is flowing from your source (like a CRM or sales database) into a format Looker can understand. This process is managed using Looker’s modeling language, LookML, which tells Looker how to interpret your database tables.

Whether you're doing this yourself or working with a data analyst, here is what Looker needs.

The Essential Data Fields

Your sales data should, at a minimum, contain the following fields to build this report:

• Sale Amount: The dollar value of each sale or transaction.
• Transaction Date: The specific date the sale occurred. Looker needs this to group sales by quarter.
• Territory: The region, state, country, or defined territory where the sale took place. This is what you'll group your sales by.
• Sales Rep Name/ID (Optional but recommended): This lets you drill down from territory performance to individual rep performance.

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Defining Dimensions and Measures in LookML

In Looker, your data fields are categorized as either dimensions or measures.

• A dimension is a descriptive field you can group by - think of it as a noun. Examples include Territory, Sales Rep Name, or Order Date.
• A measure is a calculation performed on your data - think of it as a verb or quantitative value. Examples are Total Sales Amount (a sum), Average Deal Size (an average), or Count of Orders (a count).

Your LookML model will likely have a "view" file for your sales data (e.g., sales.view.lkml) where these are defined. It might look something like this:

Defines the dimension for territory

dimension: territory { type: string sql: ${TABLE}.territory ,, }

Defines a dimension group for the order date, which automatically creates different timeframes

dimension_group: order { type: time timeframes: [ raw, date, week, month, quarter, # This is the one we'll use! year ] sql: ${TABLE}.order_date ,, }

Defines the measure for total sales, summing the sale_price column

measure: total_sales { type: sum sql: ${TABLE}.sale_price ,, value_format_name: usd_2 }

The key takeaway is that you need a dimension for territory, a timeframe dimension for quarter, and a measure for total_sales. With this foundation in place, you’re ready to build the report.

Step-by-Step: Building Your Quarterly Report in Looker

Once your data model is set up, creating the report is done in Looker's "Explore" interface. This is the playground where you can mix and match dimensions and measures to ask questions of your data.

1. Navigate to the Right Explore

In your Looker navigation, click on "Explore" and find the data source that contains your sales information. This might be called "Sales," "Orders," or something similar depending on your company's setup. This is your starting point.

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2. Select Your Dimensions and Measures

On the left sidebar of the Explore interface, you’ll see all available dimensions and measures. To build your quarterly territory report:

• Find and click on your Territory dimension. This will add a column with all your sales territories to the data table.
• Find your date dimension group (in our example, "Order"). Click on the Quarter timeframe. Looker will now group your data by territory and by quarter.
• Find and click on your Total Sales measure. This adds the calculated sales total for each territory-quarter combination.

After clicking these three fields, hit the Run button. You should now have a data table showing Total Sales for each Territory, broken down by financial quarter.

3. Filter Your Data for a Relevant Time Period

The table you just created probably shows data for all time, which is too noisy. Let's filter it down to only show the last four quarters.

1. Find the Filters section at the top of the Explore page.
2. Select the "Order Quarter" dimension as the field you want to filter on.
3. Set the filter condition to "is in the last" and enter "4" and "complete quarters" in the fields. This gives you a rolling one-year view of performance.
4. Click Run again to apply the filter. Your table will now only display data for the last four fiscal quarters.

4. Visualize the Report

A table of numbers is useful, but a visual chart tells a much cleaner story. Looker's Visualization tab lets you turn your data into a graph with just a few clicks.

Here are a few great chart options for this report:

• Column Chart: Ideal for comparing territory performance within a single quarter or across a few quarters. To configure it properly, pivot your data first. Go back to your data table, find the "Order Quarter" dimension, and click the gear icon to select "Pivot." Hit Run. Now, switch to the visualization tab and select the stacked column chart for a great comparative view.
• Line Chart: The best choice for seeing trends over time. With "Order Quarter" on the X-axis, this chart will show you if territories are growing, declining, or flat quarter-over-quarter. It makes it easy to spot seasonality and long-term momentum.
• Map Chart: If your territory data is geographic (e.g., based on state or country), a map visualization is incredibly effective. It gives you an immediate, at-a-glance view of your strongest and weakest regions by color-coding them based on total sales.

Making Your Report Even Better with More Context

You now have a functional quarterly sales report. But you can add more layers of detail to make it even more actionable.

Use Table Calculations for Quarter-over-Quarter Growth

Want to see the percentage growth of each territory from Q1 to Q2? You don't need to ask an analyst to add a new LookML field. You can do it yourself with a Table Calculation directly in the Explore interface.

1. With your pivoted data table visible (with territories as rows and quarters as columns), click on the Calculations button.
2. Click Add Calculation and give it a name like "QoQ Sales Growth."
3. Use a formula to calculate the percent change. The function pivot_offset() lets you grab a value from a previous column. The formula looks like this:

(${total_sales} - pivot_offset(${total_sales}, -1)) / pivot_offset(${total_sales}, -1)

1. Change the format to "Percent" and click Save.

Just like that, you have a new column showing the exact growth rate from one quarter to the next for every single territory, giving you much deeper context on performance momentum.

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Save Your Report to a Dashboard

Once your report looks exactly how you want it, save it so you don't have to rebuild it every time.

• Click the gear icon in the top right corner of the Explore page.
• Select "Save to Dashboard."
• Give your report a clear title like "Quarterly Sales Performance by Territory" and add it to a new or existing sales dashboard.

Now, this report will live on a dashboard where it will update automatically as new sales data comes in, giving you a real-time view of your regional performance.

Final Thoughts

Creating a quarterly sales by territory report in Looker provides the clarity needed to make smarter, data-driven decisions. By pulling in the right dimensions and measures, applying filters, and picking the right visualization, you can transform raw sales numbers into a clear story about your business's regional strengths and weaknesses.

Building reports in powerful tools like Looker often involves a learning curve and requires understanding concepts like LookML and dimensions. For teams that want to get answers without the setup time, we built Graphed to be your AI data analyst. You can simply connect data sources like Salesforce or HubSpot, and ask questions in plain English like, "show me a bar chart of my sales by territory for the last 4 quarters." It will instantly build the dashboard for you, putting powerful analytics in the hands of everyone on your team, not just the data experts.