What does Stage Duration mean in Salesforce?

It is the number of days an opportunity was in the stage shown in the report row, per Salesforce Help on opportunity report tips . On an open deal, read it as time in the current stage.

How do I see how long a deal spent in each past stage?

Use the Opportunity History report type, which shows From Stage and To Stage rows. Salesforce Help on reporting stage duration says to add Stage Duration there if it is missing.

What is the difference between Opportunity History and Opportunity Field History?

Opportunity History records stage changes along with Amount, Probability, and Close Date changes. Opportunity Field History depends on field tracking, and it had 0 rows in our test org.

Can Stage Duration be used in a report formula?

Our metadata deployment of AVG(STAGE_DURATION) failed with a field-not-found error. That is the only path we tested, and the built-in Average summary on the column worked.

Opportunity Stage Duration Report in Salesforce: Build It

Your report says a deal has spent 111 days in its stage and is 111 days old, and it will not tell you where the time went:

Pyramid Emergency Generators | Stage: Prospecting | Stage Duration: 111 | Age: 111

The report is not broken. On an Opportunities report, Stage Duration covers the current stage only, so each deal gets one number. To see how a deal moved between stages, use the Opportunity History report type, which has From Stage and To Stage columns.

Below is the full opportunity stage duration report, from New Report to the saved result, followed by the symptoms that make it look wrong and the check for each one.

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