Recently, a salesforce sales manager asked me to create a report to monitor customer accounts. The manager wanted to review the number of accounts whose account rating is Hot. For that, I created a simple tabular report in Salesforce.
Here, I will explain reports and their types. Then, I will show you how to create reports in Salesforce with a step-by-step explanation.
Reports in Salesforce
Salesforce Reports are well-structured and organized documents that allow us to access Salesforce records. Using reports, we can inspect our Salesforce records in various combinations and display them in easy and understandable formats.
Reports in Salesforce organize and display data from the Salesforce database in a meaningful and customizable format. It allows users to analyze data in various ways and provide insights into sales performance, trends, needs, and other organizational activities.
In Salesforce, there are 2 types of reports and mainly 4 types of report formats available:
Types of reports in Salesforce
- Standard Report Type in Salesforce: A standard Report Type is a predefined template that determines which objects and fields can be used in a report. For example, Accounts, Contacts & Accounts, Accounts with Partners, Opportunities, and Opportunities with Products. These types are available to create reports based on Salesforce’s data relationships.
- Custom Report Type in Salesforce: A custom report type in Salesforce allows you to specify which objects and fields you want to report on and how they are linked together. For example, you cannot create a report on the Contact object only in the standard report type. You need to go with the custom report type.
Types of Report Formats in Salesforce:
- Tabular Reports: The tabular report in Salesforce is the simplest of reports and is suited to just showing lines of data and nothing else. It is similar to an Excel spreadsheet. We cannot create charts or dashboards using tabular reports in Salesforce.
- Summary Reports: A summary report in Salesforce allows you to group your data in row format and display subtotals for each group. For example, if you want to calculate and display the total of any “amount” field per year, you can create a summary report with the “amount” field grouped together, which will give you the total for that field.
- Matrix Report: The matrix report in Salesforce represents the data group of row and column in both ways, which allows the user to analyze the report in a two-dimensional format because it is a combination of row and column fields. This provides a unique perspective o