A good Power BI dashboard answers a few questions at a glance. A bad one shows everything and answers nothing. Below are five report examples built on the same practice data, each with its question, its visuals and the numbers it shows, followed by the design rules they all follow.
1. Sales overview
The question: how much are we selling, and where?
| Visual | Fields |
|---|---|
| Cards | Total Sales (118.73M), Total Profit (16.89M), Profit Margin (14.23%) |
| Bar chart | Sales by Country |
| Line chart | Sales by month |
| Slicer | Segment |
What it shows: the United States sells most (25.03M), but the five countries are close: the smallest, Mexico, still has 20.95M. October 2014 is the best month (12.38M).
2. Profitability (finance)
The question: where do we actually make money?
| Visual | Fields |
|---|---|
| Bar chart | Profit by Segment |
| Table | Segment, Sales, Profit, Margin, with conditional formatting on Margin |
What it shows: Government earns 11.39M profit; Enterprise loses 614,546 despite 19.61M in sales. A sales-only report would never show that, which is why finance dashboards lead with profit and margin.
3. Product performance
The question: which products carry the business?
| Visual | Fields |
|---|---|
| Column chart | Sales by Product |
| Matrix | Product by Year, Sales and Profit |
What it shows: Paseo is the biggest product by far: 33.01M in sales and 4.80M in profit, more than twice the smallest, Carretera.
4. Operations: shipping
The question: are orders shipping on time?
| Visual | Fields |
|---|---|
| Card | Average days to ship |
| Column chart | Orders by ship month |
| Table | Country, average days to ship |
This one needs a second date: the practice data has Ship Date next to the order Date, connected to the date table through an inactive relationship and USERELATIONSHIP.
5. Executive one-pager
The question: are we on track this year?
| Visual | Fields |
|---|---|
| Cards | Sales YTD, Sales vs last year (%), Margin |
| Table | Country, Sales YTD, vs target, status |
Executives read one page, top-left first. Put the three numbers that matter there, and the detail below.
Design best practices
- One page, one question. If the page has no title that’s a question, it’s probably trying to do too much.
- Most important at the top-left. That’s where people look first.
- Cards for headline numbers, bars for comparing, lines for time. Use pie and donut charts only with very few categories.
- Sort bars by value, not alphabetically, unless the order means something (like months).
- Few colours. Use one colour for the data and one highlight colour for what needs attention.
- Label clearly. “Sales (USD)” beats “Sum of Sales”. Rename fields in the visual.
- Check the totals. Averages and ratios don’t add up across rows. See why your total is wrong.
- Test the filters. Click every slicer and bar before you publish. Cross-filtering is the point of Power BI; make sure it tells the truth.
Build them yourself
Every dashboard above can be built from the free practice data in Power BI Desktop. If you’d rather have each step checked, the visuals lessons and the job projects walk through them in your browser.
Sources
- Tips for designing a great Power BI dashboard, Microsoft Learn
- Visualization types in Power BI, Microsoft Learn