Free download
Free Power BI practice data
A clean sales dataset to practise Power BI with: real enough to raise real questions, small enough to check by hand. It's the same data every lesson on this site uses.
- Rows
- 700
- Columns
- 10
- Countries · products · segments
- 5 · 6 · 5
- Date range
- Sep 2013 – Dec 2014
What's in the file
One row per sale. It's Microsoft's Financial Sample, with one column added: Ship Date, so you can practise models with two dates.
| Column | Type | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Segment | Text | Customer group | Government |
| Country | Text | Where the sale was made | Canada |
| Product | Text | One of six products | Carretera |
| Units Sold | Decimal number | Units in the sale | 1618.5 |
| Sale Price | Currency | Price per unit | 20 |
| Sales | Currency | Revenue after discounts | 32370 |
| COGS | Currency | Cost of goods sold | 16185 |
| Profit | Currency | Sales minus COGS | 16185 |
| Date | Date | Order month (always the 1st) | 2014-01-01 |
| Ship Date | Date | Shipping date, 5 to 33 days later | 2014-01-29 |
Load it into Power BI Desktop
- Home → Get data → Text/CSV, pick the file, then Load.
- Rename the table to
financials, so formulas match the lessons. - Check the column types in Table view: Sales, COGS and Profit should be numbers, Date and Ship Date dates.
- Create your first measure:
Total Sales = SUM(financials[Sales]).
10 practice questions, with answers
Try each one in Power BI before opening the answer. Every answer was calculated from this exact file.
1
What are the total sales?
Show answer118,726,350.26
How: Total Sales = SUM(financials[Sales])
2
What is the overall profit margin?
Show answer14.23%
How: Profit Margin = DIVIDE(SUM(financials[Profit]), SUM(financials[Sales]))
3
Which country has the highest sales?
Show answerUnited States of America: 25,029,830.16
How: A bar chart of Sales by Country, sorted largest first.
4
Which country makes the most profit?
Show answerFrance: 3,781,020.79. Not the same country as question 3: the USA sells most but earns less per sale.
How: A bar chart of Profit by Country.
5
Which segment loses money?
Show answerEnterprise: −614,545.62
How: A table of Segment and Profit.
6
Which product has the highest sales?
Show answerPaseo: 33,011,143.95
How: A column chart of Sales by Product.
7
Which month had the highest sales?
Show answerOctober 2014: 12,375,819.92
How: Sales by Date with a date hierarchy, or a Month Year column.
8
How do 2014 sales compare with 2013?
Show answer2014: 92,311,094.75. 2013: 26,415,255.51. Careful: 2013 only has September to December, so this isn't a fair year-over-year comparison.
How: A matrix with Year on columns.
9
What were Government sales in Canada?
Show answer10,741,236.52
How: Canada Gov Sales = CALCULATE(SUM(financials[Sales]), financials[Segment] = "Government", financials[Country] = "Canada")
10
What was the single biggest sale?
Show answer1,159,200: Government, United States of America, Paseo, July 2014.
How: A table sorted by Sales, or MAX(financials[Sales]).
Practise with this data, step by step
Every lesson opens a practice copy of Power BI Desktop with this dataset loaded, and checks each step as you go. The first lessons need no account.