How to Create an Insurance Dashboard in Google Sheets

Tracking your insurance agency's performance is a lot simpler when all your key metrics are in one place. An effective dashboard gives you an at-a-glance view of your sales pipeline, agent performance, policy renewals, and overall agency health. This guide will walk you through building a dynamic insurance dashboard right in Google Sheets, from organizing your raw data to creating insightful, interactive charts that help you make better decisions.

Why Use Google Sheets for an Insurance Dashboard?

Before diving into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." While dedicated business intelligence tools are powerful, Google Sheets offers a fantastic, accessible starting point for several reasons:

It's free and cloud-based. You can access your dashboard from anywhere and share it securely with your team at no cost.
It encourages collaboration. Multiple team members can view or update the data in real-time, keeping everyone on the same page.
It's highly customizable. You have complete control to track the specific KPIs that matter most to your agency without being locked into a pre-built template.
It's beginner-friendly. If you're comfortable with basic spreadsheet functions, you can build a useful dashboard without a steep learning curve.

Planning Your Dashboard: Key Metrics for Insurance Agencies

A great dashboard tells a story with data. The first step is to decide what story you want to tell. What are the most important numbers that drive your agency forward? Think about your goals - are you focused on new business growth, client retention, or agent productivity? Choose metrics that align with those objectives.

Here are some of the most common and valuable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for insurance agencies, broken down by category:

Sales & Production KPIs

These metrics measure the revenue-generating activities of your agency.

New Policies Written: The total number of new policies sold in a given period (week, month, quarter). You should also track this by agent and by policy type.
Premium Written: The total dollar value of the premiums for new policies sold. This is a core indicator of top-line growth.
Commission Earned: The actual revenue your agency has generated from the premiums written.
Quote-to-Close Ratio: The percentage of quotes that turn into bound policies. This is a critical measure of sales effectiveness (calculated as (New Policies Written / Quotes Issued) * 100).
Average Premium per Policy: Helps you understand the value of a typical new client and spot trends in upselling or cross-selling.

Client & Policy Management KPIs

These metrics focus on the health and stability of your existing book of business.

Policies in Force (PIF): The total number of active policies your agency manages. A steady increase in PIF is a sign of a healthy, growing agency.
Client Retention Rate: The percentage of clients who renew their policies with you. A high retention rate is far more profitable than constantly acquiring new customers.
Cross-Sell Ratio (Policies per Client): The average number of policies held by each client. Increasing this ratio is a direct path to higher revenue and stickier client relationships.
Cancellation Rate (Churn): The rate at which policies are canceled before their renewal date. Tracking this helps you identify potential service issues or competitive threats.

Pipeline & Activity KPIs

These leading indicators measure the activities that fill your sales pipeline and eventually lead to new business.

Lead Source Effectiveness: Tracking where your best leads come from (e.g., web forms, referrals, social media, purchased lists) so you can double down on what works.
Quotes Issued: The total number of formal quotes generated for prospects. This reflects the level of sales activity.
Sales Cycle Length: The average time it takes from the first contact with a lead to closing the sale. Shortening this cycle improves efficiency.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Insurance Dashboard

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and build it. A well-organized structure is the key to a dashboard that is easy to update and use. The best practice is to use at least two separate tabs: one for your raw data and one for the dashboard itself.

Step 1: Create a 'Data' Tab for Raw Information

This tab is the engine of your entire dashboard. It’s where you will log every activity - every quote, every sale, every cancellation. The secret is to keep it clean, structured, and consistent. Do not merge cells or add formatting here, treat it like a database.

Create a tab named "Data" with the following headers in the first row:

Policy Type: Use consistent labels like 'Auto', 'Home', 'Life', 'Commercial'.
Status: This is crucial. Use statuses like 'Bound' (for sold policies), 'Quoted', and 'Canceled'.
Dates: Always use a consistent date format.

Every time a new quote is issued or a policy is sold, add a new row to this sheet. Consistency is paramount. If one agent enters "Homeowners" and another enters "Home", your summary calculations will be inaccurate.

Step 2: Create a 'Dashboard' Tab and Set Up a KPI Summary

This is the tab you and your team will view daily. It should be visual, clean, and easy to interpret.

Start by creating a highlights section at the top for your most important top-line metrics. You'll use simple formulas to pull these numbers from your 'Data' tab. Here are a few examples:

Total Premium Written:

=SUMIF(Data!D:D, "Bound", Data!F:F)

(This formula looks in the Status column [D] for the word "Bound" and then sums the corresponding values from the Premium column [F].)

Total Policies Written (PIF):

=COUNTIF(Data!D:D, "Bound")

(This formula counts how many times the status is "Bound".)

Quote-to-Close Rate:

For this, you need two numbers: total policies bound and total quotes issued. Let's assume a 'Quoted' status for policies not yet sold.

In one cell, get the count of bound policies (use the formula above). In another, count the quotes:

=COUNTIF(Data!D:D, "Quoted")

Then, calculate the rate:

=[Cell with Bound Policies] / ([Cell with Bound Policies] + [Cell with Quoted Policies])

Format this cell as a percentage to get your closing rate.

Step 3: Analyze Breakdowns with Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are the most powerful feature in Google Sheets for creating dashboard summaries. They do the heavy lifting of sorting and summarizing your data so you can create charts from it.

It's best practice to create a third tab, named "Pivots," to keep these tables organized and out of the way.

Example: Policies Sold by Agent

Click on your 'Data' tab.
Go to Insert > Pivot Table.
A new 'Pivots' tab will be created. In the Pivot table editor on the right:
- Add 'Agent' to the 'Rows' section.
- Add 'Policy ID' to the 'Values' section and make sure it's summarized by COUNTA.
You now have a clean table showing the total number of policies written by each agent.

You can repeat this process to create other summaries, such as Premium by Policy Type (Rows: 'Policy Type', Values: 'Premium' by SUM) or Leads by Source (Rows: 'Source', Values: 'Policy ID' by COUNTA).

Step 4: Visualize Data with Charts

Now for the fun part. Let's turn those grey pivot tables into insightful visuals back on your 'Dashboard' tab.

Go to your 'Pivots' tab and select the data in the "Policies by Agent" pivot table.
Go to Insert > Chart.
In the chart editor, select a Bar Chart.
Customize the title and colors as needed.
Cut and paste this chart (Ctrl+X or Cmd+X, then Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) into your 'Dashboard' tab.

Use different chart types suited for the data:

Bar Chart: Great for comparing agents or lead sources.
Pie Chart: Perfect for showing the breakdown of your Premium by Policy Type.
Line Chart: Ideal for tracking a metric over time, like Policies Written per Month. (To do this, create a pivot table with 'Effective Date' in Rows, grouped by month.)

Step 5: Add Interactivity with Slicers

Slicers turn your static dashboard into an interactive tool. They are filters that control your pivot tables (and the charts connected to them) with simple buttons.

Go back to your 'Data' tab.
Go to Data > Add a Slicer.
A slicer filter element will appear. On the right, in the Slicer options, choose the column you want to filter by, such as 'Agent'.
Move this slicer element to your 'Dashboard' tab.
Now, when you select an agent's name from the slicer, all your charts sourced from pivot tables will automatically update to show data only for that specific agent!

You can add slicers for Policy Type, Date ranges, and more to allow for powerful drill-down analysis on the fly.

Best Practices for Effective Dashboard Design

Keep It Simple: Avoid clutter. Only show the most important information needed to make decisions. Too many charts can be distracting.
Use a Consistent Color Scheme: Use colors logically. For example, use the same color for everything related to 'Auto' policies.
Lay It Out Logically: Place your high-level-summary KPIs at the very top. Follow with charts that show trends and breakdowns. Group related charts together.
Freeze Panes: Freeze the top row or first column (View > Freeze) so your titles or KPIs stay visible as you scroll.

Final Thoughts

By structuring your data correctly and using the power of pivot tables and charts, you can transform a simple Google Sheet into a dynamic, insightful dashboard for your insurance agency. This gives you a live look into your business's health, empowering you and your team to spot trends, celebrate wins, and proactively address challenges.

While Google Sheets is a fantastic tool, the process of manually exporting data, cleaning spreadsheets, and making sure formulas are correct can become a huge time drain. This is exactly why we built Graphed. We connect directly to your data sources, like your CRM or marketing platforms, and allow you to build real-time dashboards just by asking questions in plain English. Instead of building pivot tables and linking charts, you can simply ask, "Show me a bar chart of premium sold by each agent this quarter," and get an interactive, live-updating visualization in seconds, giving you back time to focus on what you do best - serving your clients.