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Reporting on your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data can give you real-time data-driven insights into your business such as:

- Who are your best-fit customers?
- Where do your best-fit leads come from?
- How different types of prospects move through your marketing and sales process.
- The effectiveness of your customer support.
- And anything else you are tracking in Salesforce.

Reporting is perhaps the most powerful benefit of CRM, giving a clear picture of what's going on in the company. 

When creating a report in Salesforce, the first step is to choose the report type - this is the foundation of the report and determines what information will be available to generate the report. [Salesforce](http://www.salesforce.com) has basic report types that may meet most business needs right out of the box. However, this article discusses custom report types and why they are helpful. 

## What are Report Types?

Salesforce report types act as the template(s) while defining:

- Objects: what Objects the report can view (e.g., Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, etc.) 
- Object Relationships: Add up to four objects related to the primary object.
- Fields that are available for the report.
- Fields checked by default: Which fields will automatically show on your new report?
- Field display names: There are a few situations where you might want to change a field label.

Salesforce has many pre-defined Report Types, which is fantastic but may not always offer you exactly what you need. You can't change Salesforce's preset Report Types, however, you  can build a Custom Report Type that allows you to specify what you want to view in terms of objects and fields and modify it whenever changes are required.

## When are Custom Report Types Useful?

Custom report types are often the solution if you go to create a report and run into one of the following issues:

- The objects you want don’t have a standard report type.
- The fields you want aren’t available in a standard report type.
- You want to rename any of the fields that are in a report without renaming them everywhere in Salesforce. 

If you want to create any of these, just go to Setup > Custom Report Types in Salesforce and try it out. 

## Multi-Level Object Relationships

One of the benefits of custom report types is that you can define up to four levels of related objects. So if you’ve ever wanted a report that has more levels than the standard reports - such as Accounts with Opportunities with Contacts with Tasks - then a custom report type may be for you. 

## Objects without Child Records

With custom report types you can also report on Objects that may not have a related object. For example, Opportunities with or without Activities - so you can see all Opportunities and their related activities, but still, see Opportunities that have no activity.

## Adding Fields via Lookup

Another common issue when creating reports is that you want more information from something related to the records you’re reporting on. Maybe you want more information related to the owner of a record, or you’re reporting on something like a Case and you want more details for the related records like a Product or Account. With a custom report type, it’s easy to add all kinds of details from a related object: As you can see, you now have access to all of the fields for anything related to the object you are working on, so now you can add any of those fields to the report type and they’ll be usable in reports. You can even traverse up several lookup fields (see how Account Owner has another link in the above picture). 

## Modifying Field Names or Default Fields

Sometimes when creating reports people get confused by the Salesforce field formatting. Or sometimes you just want a shorter name in the report. On the Edit Layout screen you can click on a field and then click Edit Properties and change how it will display on the report or whether or not it will be on the report by default. Small changes like this can make it much easier for users to create their own reports. 

## Takeaways

There are many possibilities in creating custom report types. If you’ve mastered the basic reports, custom report types can allow you to create reports that will amaze your co-workers and generate reports that you used to do in Excel or another tool.

Next time you get stuck creating a report, see if a custom report type fixes your issue or unlocks any extra information you can get. 

_If you need help sharing the reports that you create with all these custom report types, try out our app,_ [_Report Sender_](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EJdlFUAT)_. [Report Sender](/report-sender/) lets you send these reports in a variety of formats, to any email address, and on a schedule you specify._

Interested in more topics that are connected to Salesforce reports, check other blog posts:

- [Run Salesforce Reports in Apex](/blog/run-salesforce-reports-in-apex/)
- [7 Popular Reporting Apps for Salesforce](/blog/7-popular-reporting-apps-for-salesforce/)
- [Salesforce Reporting Tips and Best Practices](/blog/salesforce-reporting-tips-and-best-practices/)
- [How to Make Your Salesforce Reports Run Faster](/blog/salesforce-reports-run-faster/)


Reporting on your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data can give you real-time data-driven insights into your business

salesforce-custom-report-types-what-are-they-when-are-they-useful

Salesforce custom report types - what are they, when are they useful


Since Salesforce came into the scene, it has helped businesses measure their growth and other key metrics. Shared reporting has also helped to create a sense of unity amongst team members. If you’re not in on it yet, this article will show you reporting basics that could help your team.

## **What is a Report?**

We know that information helps a business to thrive. That’s why presenting information in an accessible format is vital. When data is presented in an easy and clear format, the essential details become hard to miss. Presenting a data set with ease is precisely what a report does.

A Salesforce report is a document that contains organized data from Salesforce. Salesforce has several options for formatting tabular data within the report. Salesforce reports can also include charts or graphs that summarize the report data.

There are many reporting tools out there, Salesforce even has multiple options like Einstein Analytics and Tableau. For this article, we’ll be mostly talking about the capabilities of Salesforce’s built-in reporting tool.

## **What are the standard reports in Salesforce?**

When presenting data in the form of a Salesforce report, you want to be sure that you’re using the best format for your business. There are four types of Salesforce reports, and each performs distinct functions and is more suited for different forms. Before you decide which works best for you, determine what you’re trying to communicate through your reports. These four enable you to pull, send, and review data. Below, we discuss the types of reports in Salesforce in detail.

### **Tabular**

The tabular format is the simplest and basic form of salesforce reporting. This will be the default format when creating a report in Lightning Experience. It is essentially a display of records in a tabular form. These are most effective when you want to export the data. However, don’t consider them for data manipulation like calculations or groups of data.

### **Summary**

Summary reports are most suitable for grouping rows of data. That means you can group data according to any field and proceed to calculations: totals, maximums, minimums, averages, or custom formulas. If you want to specify the accounts that bring more revenue, what services and products clients purchase more, the summary reports are the best option.

**Matrix**

This report type is very much like the summary option. However, while a summary report is done according to rows, matrix reports function according to rows and columns. It is better to use them for more complex data since you can use them to determine several totals. They are effective for large data or huge amounts of complex information.

### **Joined**

Joined reports are best for comparison. They help create separate reports and then compare individual datum. Although they are not common, they are most effective for learning the differences between accounts.

## **How to use reports in Salesforce**

Effective report management includes careful attention to details, data quality, security, and more. So to use reports in Salesforce, make sure you’re providing answers to questions and offer solutions. How?

![](/uploads/hpw-to-use-reports-in-salesforce.png)

## **How to create Salesforce reports**

1. Login to Salesforce

   ![](/uploads/login.png)

2\. Select the reports tab. If you don’t see it, use the app launcher to search for it.

![](/uploads/report-tab.png)

3\. Click New Report

![](/uploads/new-report.png)

4\. Choose the Report Type. This is a critical step because the report type determines the objects and fields that will be available in your report. If you don’t see the right option, look into creating a [Custom Report Type](https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.reports_defining_report_types.htm&type=5).

![](/uploads/report-type.png)

5\. Click on Continue to go to the report builder.

Now you will be in edit mode, with a preview. The edit mode allows you to add and remove fields, elements, group rows, and columns. You can also filter report data and show or hide a chart or tailor the report according to your needs.

6\. To add new columns, click on the “Add column” feature. Search and select field status - either scroll or type in the desired field. You can also expand or contrast the Fields pane. Then drag-and-drop or double-click a field.

![](/uploads/add-column.png)

7\. For record grouping, choose the element “Add group” and select the field to group by. Or from the preview window, find the rows you want to group and select “Group Rows”. You now have a Summary report.

![](/uploads/add-group.png)

8\. After you’ve grouped by rows or columns you can choose any numeric fields to be able to aggregate them. Just click the drop-down next to a field and click Summarize then choose Sum/Average/Max/Min.

9\. To be sure that you’re viewing the desired data by updating your filters: Click on filters. Change the default filters if needed. Often you’ll want to change the date filter and the “Show Me” filter. Add any additional filters needed.

![](/uploads/filters.png)

10\. Save and name your report.

![](/uploads/save.png)

11\. Folders determine who can see the report, so put it in the correct folder. Private reports are only visible to the user that saved them. Public reports are visible to anyone that can run reports. Keep in mind that reports always respect user permissions so people cannot see data in a report that they can’t see normally.

## **Sharing Salesforce reports**

Now that you have a fancy new report, how do you make it available to the people that need it? Well, that depends a lot on how the report will be used, so here are some of your options:

- **Setup the report to be sent on a schedule**: One of the best ways to make sure a report is used is to automatically send it to the right people. If you just want to send it to yourself, click the Subscribe button and choose your schedule. If you want to send it to other people you’ll have to do it manually or use an AppExchange app like the [CloudAnswers Report Sender](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pvspEAA). Our app lets you schedule the report to be delivered to any email address on a schedule you choose.
- **Send people a link to the report**: The easiest way to share, just to email someone a link to the report and they can open it as long as they have a login to Salesforce, access to the report folder, and access to the objects and fields that are used in the report.
- **Put it on a dashboard**: Dashboards are a great way to gather multiple report charts into one organized view. Put several reports together into a dashboard that people can explore and drill into the reports.

## **What Now?**

- Need help with reporting? Contact Us
- Want to check out Report Sender? [See it on the AppExchange](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pvspEAA)

Want to learn more about reporting? [Check out Trailhead](https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/lex_implementation_reports_dashboards)

Check also: [Salesforce reporting tips and best practices](https://cloudanswers.com/blog/salesforce-reporting-tips-and-best-practices/)


A Salesforce report is a document that contains organized data from Salesforce. Salesforce has several options for formatting tabular data within the report. Reports can include charts, graphs that summarize the report data.

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Salesforce reports can help your business

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Salesforce custom report types - what are they, when are they useful

Salesforce reports can help your business

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