A good daily sales report is one page: yesterday's sales, month to date, both against target and against the same period last year, split by the two or three things that matter in your business (region, product group, channel, salesperson), plus the handful of orders or customers worth noticing. It arrives in the inbox before 8am, every day, and nobody builds it. That last part is the point of this post, because a daily report that someone has to assemble each morning is a report that gets built at 10am on quiet days and not at all on busy ones.
Sales teams like daily numbers. It's the rhythm of the job. The template below is what the daily report should carry, followed by how to have it build itself.
What should a daily sales report show?
The numbers that let a sales leader start the day knowing where they stand and who to talk to. Not the whole sales picture, that's the monthly report's job. Just today's starting position.
| Line | What it shows | Compared against | Why it's there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yesterday's sales | Value and number of orders or transactions | Same weekday last year, daily target | The headline: was yesterday a good day? |
| Month to date | Cumulative sales this month | Month-to-date target, same days last year | The trajectory: are we on track for the month? |
| Run rate | What the month lands at if the current daily average continues | Monthly target | The forecast: what needs to change? |
| By split | Sales by region, product group, channel or salesperson, whichever two or three matter | Same period last year, target | Where the month is being won or lost |
| Notable orders | The five largest orders yesterday, or any over a threshold | Who to thank, and what's driving the number | |
| Watch list | Customers who ordered regularly and haven't recently, quotes past their expected close date | Who to call today | |
| Pipeline movement | Quotes raised, won and lost yesterday | The demand feeding next week's number |
Two design choices make it work.
Compare with the same weekday, not the same date. Monday the 4th of this year against Monday the 5th of last year, not against Sunday the 4th. Sales have a weekly shape, and comparing across weekdays produces noise that hides the signal.
Show run rate, not just month to date. Month to date tells you where you are. Run rate tells you where you'll end up, which is the number that changes behaviour. If the run rate says the month lands 8% short, the conversation on Tuesday is different from the one on the 28th.
What should you leave off a daily sales report?
Anything that doesn't change daily or doesn't prompt an action today. Margin by product line, customer profitability, long-run trends: all valuable, all monthly. Putting them on the daily report makes it a page nobody finishes.
The test for each line: would a sales manager do something differently today because of this number? Yesterday's sales, yes. Run rate, yes. Watch list, definitely. Twelve-month rolling revenue by region, no, that's for the monthly review.
Keep it to one page. If it grows, it's absorbing things that belong elsewhere.
How do you make a daily sales report build itself?
The data for every line in the table is already in a system. Sales are in the accounting system, the ERP, the till or the e-commerce platform. Quotes and pipeline are in the CRM. Targets are in a spreadsheet somewhere. Last year's sales are in the same system as this year's. Nothing on the daily report needs a human to know it; it only needs a human to fetch it, and fetching is the job to remove.
In Power BI, that looks like this. The sales system and the CRM are connected once, with a calendar that knows about weekdays and a target table loaded alongside. The model calculates the comparisons: same weekday last year, month-to-date target, run rate. The report page is laid out like the table above. Scheduled refresh runs in the early hours, after the previous day's transactions have all landed. A subscription emails the page as a PDF (or a link to the live version) at 7:30 every morning to whoever needs it.
Some things worth knowing about that setup:
- The refresh time matters. If sales land in the system until midnight, refresh at 3am. If e-commerce orders keep arriving overnight, decide on a cut-off and be consistent: "yesterday" means the same 24 hours every day.
- Subscriptions do the delivery. Power BI can send a report page by email on a schedule to a list of people. Nobody has to open anything to get the number; it's in the inbox with the coffee.
- The phone version is free. The same report, laid out for mobile, is the version the sales team actually looks at. A regional manager on the road sees their region's number at the service station.
- Row-level security keeps it relevant. Each salesperson or region can see their own figures and the company total, without seeing everyone else's, from the same report.
- Licensing is modest. Microsoft's published UK price for Power BI Pro is £10.80 per user per month as of September 2026, paid yearly. A sales team of ten is £108 a month.
If the daily sales report already exists as a spreadsheet somebody maintains, it's a good candidate to move across page for page; that's report migration at £600 per report, no minimum, and the daily sales report is often the first report a business moves because the time saving is felt every single morning. For a fuller build that also covers the monthly sales review and the pipeline, the Reporting Sprint is the fixed-price version. And if you'd like the sales team to build their own views on top, my Power BI training runs from £100 unblocking sessions to full days.
How do you use a daily sales report well?
Read it at the same time every day, briefly. Five minutes, first thing. The daily report isn't for analysis; it's for orientation and for one or two actions.
Use the watch list. The customers who've gone quiet and the quotes that are overdue are the most actionable lines on the page, and they're the ones a spreadsheet never had room for. A daily report that prompts three phone calls a day pays for itself in a week.
Talk about run rate, not yesterday. One bad day is weather. A run rate that's drifted below target for a week is a pattern, and the daily report is where patterns show up first.
And resist adding things. When someone asks for margin on the daily report, the answer is "that's on the monthly review, here's the link". The daily report stays one page.
Common questions
What is a daily sales report?
A daily sales report is a short, usually one-page summary of the previous day's sales: value and volume against target and against the same weekday last year, month-to-date progress, the run rate the month is heading for, sales by the main splits (region, product, channel, salesperson), notable orders, and a watch list of customers or quotes needing attention. It's for sales leaders to start the day oriented.
What should be included in a daily sales report?
Yesterday's sales and order count, month to date, run rate against the monthly target, sales by two or three splits, the largest orders, a watch list of quiet customers and overdue quotes, and pipeline movement (quotes raised, won, lost). Leave out anything that doesn't change daily or doesn't prompt an action that day.
Can a daily sales report be automated?
Yes, fully. All the data is in the sales system and the CRM; a reporting model connected to both can calculate the comparisons, refresh in the early hours and email the page at a set time each morning. Power BI's scheduled refresh and email subscriptions handle the delivery, so nobody builds the report by hand.
Should the daily sales report compare with last year or with target?
Both, and they answer different questions. Target tells you whether you're on plan. Same weekday last year tells you whether the market and the business are growing. A day that beats last year but misses target and a day that beats target but trails last year need different conversations.
How do you send a Power BI report by email every morning?
With a subscription. In the Power BI service, a report page can be subscribed to on a schedule (daily at a chosen time, for example) and sent to a list of recipients as an image or PDF with a link to the live report. Combined with an early-morning scheduled refresh, that delivers yesterday's numbers to the inbox before the working day starts.
How much does an automated daily sales report cost?
Power BI Pro licensing is £10.80 per user per month at Microsoft's published UK price as of September 2026. Moving an existing daily sales spreadsheet into Power BI page for page is £600 per report through my report migration service. A broader sales reporting build across the sales system and the CRM is covered by the fixed-price Reporting Sprint. The cost guide has the wider UK range.
Is there a daily sales report template?
The table in this post is the template: seven lines covering yesterday, month to date, run rate, splits, notable orders, watch list and pipeline movement, each with its comparison. It works as a spreadsheet layout or as a Power BI report page; the layout is the same, the difference is whether someone fills it in each morning or it fills itself.