csv.design

Template examples

How to design your Sales Forecast dashboard, widget by widget.

A forecast dashboard is pipeline value sliced by stage and by time - including bucketing dates into months or quarters. Here’s how those cards come together, built using the real Sales Forecast template.

The building blocks

Five widget types cover almost every dashboard. Each one needs a specific shape of column.

KPIOne numeric column, summed, averaged, or countedvalue → Closed Won
ChartA date or category column, plus a measureclose_date + value → trend
MatrixTwo category columns and one measurestage + close_date + value
RankingA category column and a measure, rankedopportunity + value → largest deals
Detail tableWhichever columns people need to inspectall 12 columns, sortable and filterable

Two ways to build every widget

Point and click

Add widget → pick a type → fill in Title, Value column, Calculation, and Format → Review → Add widget. Three steps, and every field has a default to start from.

Describe it

Type what you want in plain English. This is the faster path for anything the point-and-click form doesn't have a field for yet - like a second, smaller comparison number on a KPI.

Worked example: Sales Forecast

01

Start from the CSV

This guide uses a handful of the sample's columns: opportunity, stage, value, close_date, sales_rep, region, expected_value.

02

Sum a filtered subset: Closed Won

Add widget → KPI. Value column: value. Calculation: sum. Format: currency. Filter: stage is Closed won.

03

Average the same column: Average Deal Value

Add widget → KPI. Value column: value again. Calculation: avg instead of sum, no filter - averaged across every deal regardless of stage.

04

Rank the raw rows, not a grouping

Add widget → Ranking. Rank by: opportunity. Value: value. Calculation: sum. Format: currency. Show top: 10. Every opportunity name here is unique, so this ranks individual deals rather than grouping many rows into one bucket.

05

Bucket a date column: Stage × Close Month

Add widget → Matrix. Rows: stage. Columns: close_date. Value: value. Calculation: sum. Format: currency. Column bucket: quarter - this groups a date column into calendar quarters instead of one column per exact date.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Only numbers add up.Sum and average work on numeric columns only - stage, sales_rep, and region can be counted or grouped, not summed.
  • Format doesn’t follow automatically.Choosing "sum" doesn’t switch the card to currency by itself. "Closed Won" needed Format set to currency explicitly.
  • "Not equal" excludes one value - it isn’t the same as choosing everything else by hand."Best-Case Bookings" filters stage is not Closed lost to include every other stage in one sum. Swapping "not equal" for "equal" silently changes which rows count.

See it built

Open the finished Sales Forecast template.

Try free previewSee the live template