How to Create Monthly Sales Reports Templates in Excel?

Picture yourself in charge of the sales of a business in Houston. You are reviewing the monthly sales statistics to understand the performance of the business.

Manual data analysis and interpretation is a time-consuming process, though. As a result, it requires a significant amount of time and energy.

How can you streamline the process?

Do not worry. Monthly sales reports templates have the solution.

Monthly sales reports templates allow you to analyze your sales data. With these templates, you can identify patterns, trends, and areas of improvement.

Table of Content:

1. What is a Sales Report?
2. Why are Sales Reports Important?
3. Key Metrics to Include in Your Sales Report Template
4. Best Charts and Graphs to Present Sales Data
5. How to Create a Sales Report Template in Excel?
6. Wrap Up

Let’s look at the monthly sales reports and how to create monthly sales reports templates in Excel.

What is a Sales Report?

A sales report documents a detailed overview of your sales data, serving as one of the key data reporting examples. It includes a range of metrics such as sales volume, channels, customer demographics, and more. A sales report template helps you identify trends and patterns in your sales data. From this, you can make decisions backed with data.

You can gain insights regarding consumer habits from sales reports by utilizing different charts or graphs for example an Area chart. Furthermore, you can assess how well your products sell and find ways to improve them.

Also, you can monitor and improve sales targets and strategies.

Why are Sales Reports Important?

• Understanding Customer Behavior

A sales report can give insights into consumer habits and growth opportunities. Discovering customer preferences helps you with developing targeted marketing campaigns.

• Identify Areas of Improvement

A sales report can help you pinpoint problem areas and decide the actions to take. From the report, you can tell which products are doing well and which ones need improvement.

• Improve Sales Performance 

With the data provided by sales reports, you can monitor progress toward targets. Then formulate plans to improve sales.

• Gain Insights into Market Trends

Sales reports can assist you in getting market insights and gaining a competitive advantage.

Key Metrics to Include in Your Sales Report Template

The following are some of the crucial metrics to include in a sales report template:

1. Sales volume measures the number of sales over a specified period.
2. Sales channels to track the channels used to make sales.
3. Average order value to monitor the average amount spent on each order.
4. Product performance to keep tabs on how well each product is selling and how satisfied customers are.
5. Customer demographics to monitor consumer age, gender, and location.
6. Customer feedback to keep tabs on ratings and reviews left by customers.
7. Revenue to measure the total revenue over a particular period.

Best Charts and Graphs to Present Sales Data

• Radar Chart

A Radar Chart is a powerful tool for presenting sales data. It is also known as a Spider \Graph or Star Chart. It shows how different variables compare to each other over a period. It is especially useful when comparing sales performance across multiple products or regions.

Using the Radar Chart, you can easily spot trends and patterns in the sales figures. You can also use it to assess how well one sales team or product does compared to another.

The axes of the chart are structured around the circumference of a circle. It shows different aspects of sales along the axes.

Let’s say you want to present this sales data.

Months	TVs	Smart Phones	Computers
Jan	80	100	50
Feb	65	60	55
Mar	75	95	51
Apr	80	75	40
May	90	100	45
Jun	85	60	30
Jul	65	95	39
Aug	70	75	45
Sep	80	109	56
Oct	93	80	39
Nov	99	109	48
Dec	80	75	44

Here is the Radar Chart created from your data.

 

• Comparison Bar Chart

A Comparison Bar Chart is a useful tool for displaying sales data. It makes it simple to compare the sales of two or more products over a particular period.

It comprises a succession of bars labeled with the product name and sales figures. The bars can be positioned vertically or horizontally, depending on the data. This makes it simple to compare the sales of each product and spot trends.

Let’s say you have the sales data below.

Months	Name	Sales
March	Alan	90
March	David	82
March	Lewis	66
March	Boris	72
April	Alan	85
April	David	62
April	Lewis	50
April	Boris	73
May	Alan	40
May	David	60
May	Lewis	80
May	Boris	76

Here is the Comparison Bar Chart created from your data.

• Sankey Chart

The Sankey Chart presents the sales flow from the client to the business. It presents the customer’s journey from the initial contact to the purchase and delivery.

It also provides information on how successful a customer’s buying journey was. Thus indicating places where you can improve sales.

The Sankey Chart displays the sales report in an easy-to-understand format.

You can also use the chart to compare different sales channels and methods. As a result, you can decide which ones to prioritize.

It also aids in detecting changes in trends or performance.

Let’s visualize the data below on a Sankey Chart.

Sales Source	Sales Owner	Duration	Sale Status	Sales
Website	Website Visit	1-2 Minutes	Qualified	39
Website	Website Visit	1-2 Minutes	New	73
Website	Website Visit	3-4 Minutes	Nurturing	156
Website	Consideration	1-2 Minutes	New	46
Website	Consideration	3-4 Minutes	Qualified	104
Website	Consideration	3-4 Minutes	Nurturing	41
Website	Purchase	1-2 Minutes	Qualified	73
Website	Purchase	1-2 Minutes	Nurturing	46
Website	Purchase	3-4 Minutes	Nurturing	43

Here is the final visualization for the data.

How to Create a Sales Report Template in Excel?

Excel is one of the most used visualization instruments. However, the spreadsheet application lacks ready-to-use analytical report-based charts, such as Sankey Charts, Mosaic plots, and Pareto Charts.

We’re not advising you to do away with Excel in favor of other expensive tools.

This is because there’s an amazingly affordable visualization tool that comes as an add-in you can easily install in Excel to access insightful and ready-to-use analytical report-based charts, including Mekko charts. The tool is called ChartExpo.

So, what is ChartExpo?

ChartExpo is an add-in you can easily install in your Excel.

With many ready-to-go and insightful charts, graphs, and maps, ChartExpo turns your complex, raw data into easy-to-interpret and visually appealing ready-to-use analytical report-based charts that tell data stories in real time.

More benefits

• ChartExpo is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, which makes it extremely light. You have a 100% guarantee that your Excel won’t be slowed down.
• You can export your charts in JPEG, PDF, SVG, and PNG formats.
• ChartExpo add-in is only $10 a month after the end of the trial period.

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

1. Open your Excel application.
2. Open the worksheet and click on the “Insert” menu.
3. You’ll see the “My Apps”.
4. In the office Add-ins window, click on “Store” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
5. Click on the “Add” button to install ChartExpo in your Excel.

ChartExpo charts and graphs are available both in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Please use the following CTA’s to install the tool of your choice and create beautiful visualizations in a few clicks in your favorite tool.

Example

Let’s use example 3 to demonstrate how to create a web analytics dashboard in Excel.

• To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel.
• Now Click on My Apps from the INSERT menu.

• Choose ChartExpo from My Apps, then click Insert.

• Once ChartExpo is loaded. Click on “Sankey Chart” from the list of charts.

• Click the “Create Chart From Selection” button after selecting the data from the sheet, as shown.

• The Sankey Chart will look as follows.

• If you want to have the title of the chart, click on Edit Chart, as shown in the above image.
• To change the title of the chart, click on the pencil icon that is available very next to Chart Header.
• It will open the properties dialog. Under the Text section, you can add a heading in Line 1 enable the Show Give the appropriate title of your chart, and click on the Apply button.

• To change the node color, click on the pencil icon available with the node. Expand the Node properties and change color from the Node Color property. Click on the Apply button.
• For saving changes click on Save Changes. This will persist the changes.

• The final chart will look like below.

Insights

• The website traffic in Level 1 (Sales Source) was 621.
• At Level 2 (Sales Owner), 43% (268) of the visitors visited the website: 31% (191) purchased after some deliberation, and 26% (162) decided to buy right away.
• Level 3 (Duration) saw 45% (277) spending 1-2 minutes and 55% (344) spending 3-4 minutes on the website.
• Finally, Level 4 (Sales Status) was broken down into 35% (216) qualified users, 46% (286) nurturing users who were still contemplating their purchase, and 19% (119) new users.

FAQs:

What is a monthly sales report?

A monthly sales report documents the success or failure of a business’s sales efforts over a given month. It is useful for identifying problem areas and gaining insights into the overall sales performance.

What are the key metrics to include in a sales report template?

A sales report template should include metrics that comprehensively overview the business’s sales performance.

These key metrics include:

• Sales volume.
• Sales channels.
• Average order value.
• Product performance.
• Customer demographics.
• Customer feedback.

How do you write a monthly sales report?

To compile accurate data for a sales report, you need to scrutinize the month’s sales activity. It has to provide an overall sales summary and a detailed sales analysis by category. It should also highlight emerging trends and patterns.

How do I create a sales report in Excel?

You can create a monthly sales report in Excel with ChartExpo. It enables you to create an informative and appealing sales report. It also enables you to customize your report by changing colors and labels.

Wrap Up

You can understand the dynamics of your sales better with the help of monthly sales reports. They can point out areas of opportunity and improvement.

Metrics like revenue, sales channels, and customer feedback can shed light on buying patterns.

With monthly sales report templates, you can easily analyze sales data. You can present sales data with the use of charts and graphs.

ChartExpo enables you to create a monthly sales report in Excel with insightful charts and graphs.

Creating monthly sales reports is a demanding task. But with the right tools and resources, it can be simple.

With the tips and techniques in this blog post, you can create a successful sales report in no time.