How to Create a Report in Salesforce: A Comprehensive Guide

Your marketing director storms into the weekly leadership meeting, frustrated that she can’t tell which campaigns are actually driving revenue. Meanwhile, your sales manager struggles to explain why the pipeline forecast is off by 30% for the third quarter in a row. And your customer success team? They’re manually counting cases in spreadsheets because they can’t figure out how to track resolution times effectively.

These scenarios play out daily in organizations using Salesforce without mastering its reporting capabilities. The data is there—customer interactions, sales opportunities, support cases—but extracting meaningful insights remains frustratingly out of reach. According to Salesforce’s own research, 41% of companies admit their current systems can’t adequately make sense of data from different sources, leaving critical business questions unanswered and decisions based on gut feeling rather than evidence.

Effective Salesforce reporting bridges this gap. When properly implemented, reports transform raw data into actionable intelligence that drives revenue growth, improves customer satisfaction, and increases operational efficiency. But creating reports that deliver genuine business value requires more than clicking a few buttons—it demands understanding report types, mastering customization techniques, and implementing best practices that ensure your reports answer the right questions for the right people at the right time.

This comprehensive guide walks you through everything you need to know about creating reports in Salesforce, from basic tabular reports to sophisticated joined reports with custom objects. You’ll learn not just the mechanics of building reports but the strategic thinking that makes them valuable tools for business insight rather than just data dumps. Whether you’re a Salesforce administrator supporting multiple teams or a business analyst seeking to extract deeper insights from your CRM data, mastering these techniques will transform how your organization leverages its Salesforce investment.

Introduction to Salesforce Reports and Their Business Significance

Salesforce reports represent one of the most powerful yet underutilized features within the Salesforce ecosystem. At their core, reports are tools that allow you to examine your customer data in virtually infinite combinations while displaying results in formats that facilitate sharing and collaborative decision-making.

The primary value of reports lies in their ability to answer complex business questions that executives, managers, and frontline employees need answered to perform their roles effectively. When a sales manager can quickly see which deals are stalling in the pipeline, they make better decisions about where to focus coaching efforts. When marketing can accurately attribute revenue to specific campaigns, they allocate budgets more effectively. And when customer service leaders can identify which types of cases take longest to resolve, they can implement targeted process improvements.

Effective reporting directly impacts key organizational metrics. Sales teams with clear visibility into their sales pipeline convert more opportunities and close deals faster. Marketing teams with accurate campaign attribution data generate more qualified leads at lower cost. Support teams with insight into case resolution patterns deliver higher customer satisfaction while reducing operational costs.

Yet despite these benefits, many organizations struggle to fully leverage Salesforce’s reporting capabilities. Reports get built reactively to answer one-time questions rather than strategically to support ongoing decision processes. They proliferate without governance, creating confusion about which reports contain the “official” numbers. And they often fail to evolve as business needs change, leading to abandoned reports and wasted effort.

Getting Started with Salesforce Reports: Navigation and Fundamental Concepts

Before building your first report, you need to understand the foundational concepts that govern how Salesforce reports function. The first step involves navigating to the appropriate location within Salesforce. In Lightning Experience, access reporting functionality by clicking on the Analytics tab and selecting “Create | Report,” or navigate to the Reports tab and click the “New Report” button.

Report types function as the foundational template that determines which records and fields are available within a report. Think of report types as pre-built queries that establish relationships between objects in your Salesforce instance. When you initiate the report creation process, Salesforce displays a searchable list of available report types organized by category.

Understanding the distinction between report types and report formats is crucial. A report type defines which objects and fields are available, whereas a report format determines how results are visually arranged. Salesforce offers four primary report formats:

• Tabular: Simple list of records with no grouping, similar to a spreadsheet
• Summary: Groups records according to one field with subtotals
• Matrix: Groups records by both rows and columns, showing relationships between related data
• Joined: Combines data from multiple report types into a single report

Selecting the appropriate report type requires planning. Before building a report, write down the specific questions it must answer. For a sales manager seeking to understand win rates by representative, the “Opportunities” report type provides access to all opportunity-related fields. For someone analyzing which opportunities are associated with specific products, “Opportunities with Products” would be more appropriate.

Creating Your First Report: Standard and Tabular Report Fundamentals

The simplest approach to report creation begins with building a tabular report—the foundational format that presents data in a spreadsheet-like structure where each row represents one record and each column represents a field. This format proves highly effective when you simply want to view all records of a particular type without grouping or summarization.

To create a basic tabular report:

1. Navigate to the Reports tab and click “New Report”
2. Select a report type by searching, filtering by objects, or browsing categories
3. Click “Start Report” to open the report builder in edit mode

In the report builder interface, you’ll notice several key sections that control your report’s appearance and functionality:

• Columns section: Determines which fields appear as columns
• Filters section: Limits data to only records meeting specified criteria
• Preview panel: Shows how your report will look when run

To add a column, select a field from the “Add column” dropdown. Remove unnecessary columns by clicking the menu next to a column header and selecting “Remove Column.” Apply filters by clicking “Add Filter” and selecting fields and criteria that narrow your focus to relevant records.

Enable the “Update Preview Automatically” toggle to see immediate visual feedback as you make changes. Once satisfied with your report structure, click “Save,” provide a meaningful name and description, and select an appropriate folder location. The folder selection matters because access to reports is controlled through folder permissions—users can only access reports in folders to which they have been granted appropriate access.

Understanding and Creating Advanced Report Formats: Summary, Matrix, and Joined Reports

While tabular reports provide a straightforward view of data, business analysis frequently requires more sophisticated formats that enable grouping, summarization, and cross-dimensional analysis. Summary reports represent the next level of complexity, allowing you to group records by one or more fields and display subtotals for each group.

In the Lightning Report Builder, transform a tabular report into a summary report by dragging a field into the “Group Rows” section. This automatically converts the format and groups your data accordingly. For instance, a sales manager reviewing opportunities grouped by stage can immediately see how many opportunities exist in each stage and the total expected revenue, enabling rapid assessment of pipeline health and forecasting accuracy.

Once you’ve added at least one row grouping, you can add a second dimension by dragging a field into the “Group Columns” section. This transforms your summary report into a matrix report—particularly valuable when analyzing data across multiple dimensions, such as comparing sales by representative across quarters or analyzing case volume by type and priority.

Joined reports represent the most sophisticated format available and are designed to combine multiple report types within a single view. This enables analysis of data that doesn’t naturally relate through standard object relationships. A joined report can contain up to five report blocks, with each block displaying data from a different report type.

To create a joined report in Lightning Experience:

1. Start by creating a standard report with your initial report type
2. Click “Report” in the upper left corner and select “Joined Report”
3. Click “Apply” to convert the current report into a joined format
4. Click “Add Block” to add additional report types
5. Add a common grouping field across all blocks (such as Account Name)

One practical use case involves sales representatives ensuring they’re not conducting renewal conversations with accounts that have unresolved support cases. By creating a joined report with accounts as Block 1, cases as Block 2, and opportunities as Block 3, filtering to show only open cases and opportunities, sales reps can immediately identify at-risk accounts and prioritize accordingly.

Creating Custom Report Types and Advanced Customization Techniques

As organizations mature in their use of Salesforce, standard report types often prove insufficient to address unique business questions. Creating custom report types becomes necessary to combine data from objects and relationships specific to your implementation.

A custom report type defines a specific set of records and fields available to reports based on relationships between a primary object and its related objects. This allows administrators to curate exactly which fields and relationships are exposed to report creators.

Creating a custom report type requires administrative access:

1. Navigate to Setup and search for “Report Types”
2. Click “New Custom Report Type”
3. Select the primary object (such as Accounts, Opportunities, or Cases)
4. Complete the identification section with label, name, and description
5. Define which related objects should be included and how they relate
6. Enhance the report type by selecting which fields should be available

Salesforce allows up to four objects in a relationship chain, providing significant flexibility for complex reports. This eliminates the need for multiple separate reports to answer a single business question.

Beyond custom report types, individual report creators can further customize reports using features like bucket fields and summary formulas. Bucket fields allow you to group values into custom categories without modifying your data model. For example, create a bucket field that groups opportunities into “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” based on amount, making it easy to analyze pipeline distribution across deal sizes.

Summary formula columns provide even more sophisticated analysis capabilities, allowing custom calculations that operate on summarized data rather than individual records. These formulas require at least one row grouping and can calculate values using functions like SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, or MIN. A financial analyst might create a summary formula that calculates the average opportunity amount for each sales representative by dividing the sum of opportunity amounts by the count of opportunities.

Enhancing Reports with Visualization, Filters, and Performance Optimization

Creating a report that returns the correct data is only part of the challenge—presenting that data in a manner that enables rapid insights requires thoughtful visualization. Report charts transform numerical data into visual representations that help users quickly grasp patterns and trends that might be obscured in tabular format.

In Lightning Experience, add a chart to a report by ensuring it has at least one row grouping, then clicking “Add Chart” and selecting the desired chart type. Salesforce offers various options including vertical bar charts, horizontal bar charts, pie charts, and donut charts, each with different advantages depending on the data being visualized.

For sales pipeline analysis, a stacked bar chart often provides more useful information than a funnel chart, as it clearly shows not only the total opportunity count or value at each stage but also provides visibility into expected close timing. When creating charts, carefully configure the title and subtitle to accurately communicate what the chart displays, including information about any applied filters.

Report performance becomes increasingly important as reports grow in complexity and access larger data sets. Add filters to remove unnecessary data and limit the number of records processed. For optimal performance, filter records by specific values or exact date ranges rather than using operators like “contains” or “does not contain,” which require more processing steps.

For reports utilizing formulas, avoid row-level formulas whenever possible, as these evaluate each individual record and can significantly slow processing. Instead, consider moving formula logic into formula fields on the objects themselves, as these are calculated through workflows and don’t impact report execution time.

Implementing Specialized Report Types for Specific Business Functions

Salesforce provides numerous pre-built standard report types tailored to specific business functions, recognizing that different departments require different analytical perspectives. Understanding which standard report types address specific business questions can dramatically accelerate the report creation process.

Account and Contact reports allow analysis of active, neglected, or new accounts, as well as accounts grouped by owner or partner. The standard View filter includes options like “My accounts,” “All visible accounts,” and options related to territories and account teams.

Opportunity reports represent one of the most frequently used types, providing information about opportunities including owners, accounts, stages, and amounts. Many opportunity report types include information from associated objects such as products, partners, and quotes. The “Opportunities with Historical Trending” report type enables analysis of historical trends in the sales pipeline, helping managers understand whether pipeline quality is improving or declining over time.

Activity reports gather information about open activities, completed activities, and multi-person events, enabling managers to assess team productivity. Campaign reports analyze marketing effectiveness by providing visibility into campaign ROI and which campaigns generated the most closed opportunities. Lead reports address the needs of demand generation teams by showing information about lead sources, statuses, and response times.

Case reports track case creation volumes, case comments, case ownership, and time since status changes, providing customer service managers with the operational metrics needed to assess support team performance and customer satisfaction.

Advanced Reporting Features: Scheduling, Snapshots, and Historical Analysis

Beyond creating and running reports on-demand, Salesforce provides advanced features that enable reporting to become part of automated business processes and ongoing performance monitoring. Report scheduling allows you to automatically execute reports on a predetermined frequency, with results emailed to specified recipients without manual intervention.

To schedule a report:

1. Navigate to the report and select “Subscribe” from the More Actions menu
2. Configure the schedule frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly)
3. Set preferred start time and recipient email addresses

The system will automatically execute the report on the specified schedule and email the results to all configured recipients, enabling stakeholders to receive regular updates on key metrics without having to remember to run reports manually.

Reporting snapshots represent a more sophisticated approach to capturing and tracking historical data over time. A reporting snapshot allows you to save report results to fields on a custom object at specified points in time, creating a historical data set that enables trend analysis and period-over-period comparison.

For example, schedule a reporting snapshot to capture the opportunity pipeline every Friday, allowing analysis of pipeline trends week over week and identification of seasonal patterns in deal flow. This capability proves particularly valuable for sales managers seeking to understand whether their team’s pipeline is healthy and growing or whether opportunities are stalling in early stages.

Historical trend reporting uses a special custom report type designed to highlight changes between five snapshot dates, enabling visual representation of data changes over time. By examining stage conversion analysis data, managers can answer questions like “What percentage of the pipeline progressed beyond each stage in this time period?” and “What is the average conversion rate for open opportunities in this stage?”

Sharing Reports, Dashboards, and Best Practices for Effective Reporting

The value of reports multiplies when they’re effectively shared with appropriate stakeholders, enabling collaborative analysis and aligned decision-making. Reports are shared through folder-based access controls, meaning the folder in which a report is saved determines who has access to view, edit, or manage it.

Three primary access levels exist for report folders:

• Viewer access: Users can view reports but cannot edit
• Editor access: Users can view and save reports
• Manager access: Users can view, share, save, rename, and delete reports

When sharing reports, carefully consider access requirements and create a folder structure that aligns with organizational reporting needs. Reports can also be placed on dashboards, providing a curated view of multiple related reports and metrics that support executive decision-making.

Effective Salesforce reporting depends on adherence to best practices:

• Use metrics alongside charts to provide summary totals
• Carefully curate detail fields, removing unnecessary ones that clutter the interface
• Position critical fields like Stage, Owner, Type, and Amount close to the left edge
• Use dashboard filters to allow a single dashboard to serve multiple audiences
• Apply conditional highlighting sparingly to draw attention to critical numbers

Organizations should avoid common reporting mistakes that undermine data quality and decision-making effectiveness. These include creating opportunity stages that are too granular or ambiguously defined, not utilizing Opportunity Products, and failing to leverage Chatter on opportunity records for internal discussion and approval workflows.

Leveraging Custom Report Types and Bucket Fields for Complex Analysis

The strategic creation and deployment of custom report types represents one of the most powerful approaches to scaling reporting across larger Salesforce implementations. When designing custom report types, think deeply about the end goal of the report and which data must be combined to answer critical business questions.

The process begins in Setup by searching for “Report Types” and selecting “New Custom Report Type.” Select the primary object, complete the required identification fields, and specify whether the report type is deployed immediately or remains in draft status. In the “Report Records Set” section, define which related objects should be included and specify the relationship type.

Once the basic structure is established, enhance it by selecting additional fields through the “Edit Layout” option, which allows you to pull in related fields through lookup relationships. This approach exposes a rich set of fields without forcing report creators to navigate complex relationship hierarchies themselves.

Bucket fields provide an additional layer of customization, allowing you to categorize continuous or categorical data into meaningful groups without modifying the data model. For currency amounts, create buckets for “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” deals based on thresholds. For picklist values, consolidate multiple values into meaningful business categories. Bucket fields can then be used as grouping dimensions, enabling analysis across the newly created buckets.

Maximizing Report Performance and Addressing Common Challenges

As organizations accumulate data and report complexity increases, performance degradation can become a significant challenge. When a report begins to execute slowly, systematically address the root causes rather than accepting degraded performance as inevitable.

The most common cause of slow-running reports involves processing excessive amounts of unnecessary data. By carefully reviewing and tightening filters to return only truly relevant records, you can dramatically improve performance. Another frequent issue involves reports that reference objects outside the report type through cross-object formulas, which forces the system to evaluate additional relationships for every record.

When this situation arises, consider restructuring the report to use a different report type that includes the necessary objects, or create a formula field that performs the calculation without requiring cross-object references. Complex sharing rules can also significantly impact performance, as these must be evaluated each time the report accesses data. Simplify sharing rules by combining multiple permission sets and keeping rules as straightforward as possible.

Hard-deleting records from Salesforce also improves report performance, as deleted records remain in the recycle bin for up to one month and must be processed by reporting queries. For organizations with large recycle bins, emptying it can provide a meaningful performance improvement. Additionally, use exact value operators such as “equals” rather than “contains” when filtering on specific values.

Conclusion: Empowering Data-Driven Decision-Making Through Effective Reporting

The ability to create and leverage effective Salesforce reports represents a critical skill for administrators and business analysts seeking to unlock the full value of their Salesforce investment. From simple tabular reports that provide quick visibility into current data to sophisticated joined reports that combine multiple data sources, Salesforce provides a comprehensive toolkit for transforming raw data into actionable business intelligence.

As organizations mature in their reporting practices, the creation of custom report types and leveraging advanced features such as historical snapshots, bucket fields, and summary formulas elevates reporting from a tactical activity to a strategic capability that provides ongoing competitive advantage. By carefully planning which data relationships to expose, curating field selections to balance functionality with performance, and applying best practices around visualization and sharing, organizations create a reporting foundation that scales with growing data volumes and complexity.

The most successful Salesforce implementations recognize reporting as central to organizational effectiveness and invest in building a strong reporting culture where insights flow freely across departments and inform business decisions at all levels. By following the methodologies outlined in this guide and continuously refining reporting processes based on stakeholder feedback, you can ensure your organization extracts maximum value from customer data and uses those insights to drive revenue growth, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve strategic objectives.

Revenue Grid enhances your Salesforce integration capabilities with AI-powered analytics that go beyond standard reports. Our platform connects your Salesforce data with email, calendar, and other critical systems, providing a complete picture of customer interactions and sales activities that standard reports can’t capture. With Revenue Grid, you’ll not only see what’s happening in your pipeline but understand why it’s happening and what actions will drive the best results.

Book a demo today to discover how Revenue Grid can help you extract deeper insights from your Salesforce data and transform reporting from a backward-looking activity into a forward-looking strategic advantage.