Trail Map › Use-Case Catalog › Reports
📈 Growth & Insight · Module 06

Reports: A Live Number Instead of a Stale Spreadsheet

A report is a summary of your data — like "how many deals did we close this month?" How to build one inside SmartLite itself, always up to date, with no spreadsheet exports and no waiting on a data analyst.

4
Tabs
~10 min
Time to Complete
80 pts
Available
1 Badge
Insights Builder

Why self-service reporting matters

SO
Sasha Ortiz · Sales Operations

"I want to see 'Closed Won this Quarter, by rep' live, before Monday's standup meeting — not a spreadsheet somebody exported on Friday afternoon that's already out of date by the time we look at it."

Every time someone exports data to a spreadsheet, the numbers start going stale, and mistakes can creep in. Leadership needs numbers that reflect what's true right now — filtered exactly the way the business needs to see them.

💡
What this means for you
You get an always-current answer inside the CRM itself. No data exports, no stale numbers, and no waiting on a separate data/BI team.

Anatomy of a report

Building a report just means making four decisions: which object (record type) to report on, which fields to show, which filters to apply, and how to group the results. Here's what that looks like behind the scenes, saved as a simple record of your choices — this is just for reference, you build it through the point-and-click Report Builder, not by writing this yourself:

{ "name": "Q1 Opportunities", "objectApiName": "opportunity", "selectedFields": ["name", "amount", "stage", "close_date"], "filters": [{ "field": "stage", "operator": "EQUALS", "value": "Closed Won" }], "groupByField": "stage", "sortField": "amount", "sortDirection": "DESC" }
✅
Same rules, everywhere
Running a report uses the exact same visibility rules as record lists. A report can never show a viewer a record they wouldn't otherwise be allowed to see.

A "filter operator" is just the comparison you use, like "equals" or "greater than." Here are the ones you can use: EQUALS | NOT_EQUALS | CONTAINS | STARTS_WITH | GREATER_THAN | LESS_THAN | IS_BLANK | IS_NOT_BLANK. You can export any report straight to a CSV file (a plain spreadsheet format) whenever you want.

1 Build "Closed Won This Quarter, by Rep"

Open the Report BuilderClick Reports, then New Report.
Pick the object and fieldsObject: Opportunity. Fields: name, amount, stage, close_date, owner.
Add filtersstage = "Closed Won" and close_date within this quarter.
Group and sortGroup by: Owner. Sort by: amount, highest first.
Save, run, and exportSave the report, click Run to see the results, then try the "Export CSV" button.

Day-to-day: anyone needing a number

Run a saved report before a meetingOpen it fresh right before the standup so the number is guaranteed current.
Export when you need to share outside the CRMUse Export CSV for a slide deck or a spreadsheet-based follow-up.

Day-to-day: sales operations

Build a new report whenever leadership asks a new questionMost requests are just a new combination of object, fields, filter, and group-by.
🎯
What to try next
Continue to the Dashboard & Home trail to surface a report's numbers on the page everyone sees at login.

Test what you learned

1. Can a report show a viewer records their sharing settings would normally hide from them?
Yes, reports always show every record in the org
No — reports apply the same sharing filter as record lists
2. When you export a report to CSV, what actually happens?
It's queued as a background job you have to wait hours for
It downloads straight to your browser right away — nothing is stored on a server