How to Add Grand Total in Looker Studio

Showing a grand total in your Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) report seems like it should be simple, but it can sometimes be a frustrating extra step. Whether it’s in a table, a pivot table, or as a standalone number, getting that final sum is essential for providing at-a-glance context to your dashboards. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add grand totals to different charts and what to do when things don't go as planned.

Why Grand Totals Are Your Best Friend in Reporting

Before jumping into the how-to, let's quickly cover why totals are more than just a number at the bottom of a chart. In a dashboard packed with data, a grand total acts as an anchor point, providing immediate business context.

The Big Picture: It provides a top-line summary of performance. At a glance, you can see total revenue, total ad spend, total sessions, or total leads generated for the selected time period.
Context for Details: A total gives individual rows meaning. Knowing a specific campaign drove 500 conversions is useful, but knowing it drove those 500 out of a total of 5,000 tells you its relative impact on your overall goals.
Efficiency: It saves your stakeholders from having to manually add up rows or export the data to a spreadsheet just to get a simple sum. It streamlines analysis and puts the final answer right on the screen.

In short, a grand total elevates your report from a list of data points to a cohesive performance summary.

How to Add a Grand Total Row to a Table

The most common place you'll want a grand total is within a table chart. Looker Studio makes this incredibly easy with a feature called the "summary row." Let's walk through it with a typical website traffic report example using Google Analytics data.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Imagine you have a table showing website users by channel. The setup would have the Session default channel group as the dimension and Total Users as the metric.

Select your table: First, click on the table visualization in your report to activate it. This will open the Properties Panel on the right side of your screen.
Navigate to the 'Setup' tab: This is the default tab that opens in the Properties Panel. It's where you define the dimensions and metrics for your chart.
Scroll to the Metrics section: Look for the list of metrics you've added to your table. If you scroll down past the metrics, filters, and date range options, you'll find a set of checkboxes for additional table functionalities.
Check 'Show summary row': At the bottom of this 'Setup' section, you'll find the magic checkbox labeled Show summary row. Simply check this box.

That's it! Looker Studio will instantly add a "Grand total" row to the bottom of your table, summing up all the metrics. It handles the logic for you, providing a clean and accurate total for metrics like Users, Sessions, Clicks, or Revenue.

To make your total stand out, you can go to the 'Style' tab in the Properties Panel, scroll down to the "Table Footer" section, and change the summary row's background color, font size, or text color.

When Your Grand Total Calculation Looks Wrong

You might notice that the total for some metrics, especially calculated fields or ratios like Average Session Duration, Conversion Rate, or Cost Per Click (CPC), doesn't seem right. This isn’t a bug - it’s about understanding how Looker Studio calculates totals.

Instead of summing or averaging the values you see in the column, Looker Studio recalculates the metric at the grand total level using the base data. For ratios, this is actually the correct way to do it.

Let’s use an ad campaign CPC as an example:

Campaign A: $100 Spend / 50 Clicks = $2.00 CPC
Campaign B: $20 Spend / 2 Clicks = $10.00 CPC

If you were to simply average the CPC column, you’d get ($2.00 + $10.00) / 2 = $6.00 CPC. This is incorrect and misleading because it doesn't account for the volume of each campaign.

Looker Studio intelligently recalculates the total like this:

Total Spend ($120) / Total Clicks (52) = $2.31 CPC

This is the true, weighted average CPC for your account. Next to your metric in the Setup panel, you can often see its default aggregation type (e.g., SUM, AVG, or AUT). "AUT" (Automatic) lets Looker Studio decide the correct method for the total row, which is usually what you want for ratios.

If you genuinely need a different calculation, you'll have to create a custom calculated field with specific logic or blend data sources, but for 99% of cases, letting Looker handle the summary row math is the best approach.

Using Scorecards for Standalone Grand Totals

Not every grand total needs to live inside a table. For the most important KPIs on your dashboard, a Scorecard chart is the perfect tool. A scorecard is designed to show a single, standalone value - essentially, a grand total for one metric.

How to Add a Scorecard

Navigate to the toolbar and click Add a chart.
Select Scorecard from the dropdown menu.
Place it on your report. A scorecard will appear with a default metric.
With the scorecard selected, use the 'Setup' tab in the Properties Panel to change the metric to your desired KPI, such as Revenue, Total Users, or Conversions.

A common and effective design practice is to place several scorecards at the top of your report (e.g., Total Revenue, Total Spend, Total ROI). This creates a high-level summary header, with more detailed tables and graphs below it. Each scorecard functions as a dynamic grand total for its specific metric.

Getting Totals and Subtotals in Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are fantastic for multi-dimensional analysis, and Looker Studio gives you robust control over both row and column totals within them.

Let's say you build a pivot table with Country as your Row Dimension and Device Category as your Column Dimension, with Sessions as the metric.

Select your pivot table to open the Properties Panel.
On the 'Setup' tab, scroll down past your dimension and metric definitions.
You’ll see checkboxes specifically for pivots: Show grand total (Rows) and Show grand total (Columns).
Checking 'Show grand total (Rows)' adds a total row at the bottom, just like a regular table, summarizing values across all countries.
Checking 'Show grand total (Columns)' adds a total column on the right, summarizing values across all device categories.

If you have more than one row dimension (e.g., Continent then Country), Looker Studio will also automatically create subtotals for the primary dimension, which is extremely helpful for hierarchical data.

Troubleshooting: Summary Row Option is Grayed Out

Sometimes, you might find the "Show summary row" checkbox is grayed out and you can't click it. This usually happens for one of a few reasons:

Connector Limitations: Some third-party community connectors may not have been built to support the summary row functionality.
Averaged Metrics: When your table's single metric is already set to an AVG aggregation type. You cannot sum up averages.
Complex Calculated Fields: Certain formulas in your calculated fields, particularly those involving distinct counts (COUNT_DISTINCT) or other advanced functions, can be difficult for the underlying data source to sum up correctly after the initial query.

If you encounter this, the best workaround is to create a separate scorecard and place it near the bottom of your table. While not a perfect solution, it serves the same purpose of displaying the grand total on your dashboard.

Final Thoughts

Mastering grand totals is a fundamental skill for building clear and effective Looker Studio dashboards. By using the built-in summary row for tables and pivot tables or using scorecards for key KPIs, you can transform a dense report into a clear story about business performance.

Building effective reports shouldn't feel like wrestling with menus and settings for hours. Creating clear dashboards with totals, trends, and comparisons is a crucial but often time-consuming step. At Graphed, we've automated this process away. Instead of building tables and tweaking settings, you can simply ask, "show me total revenue by campaign for the last quarter in a table" and get a live, interactive visualization in seconds, complete with grand totals calculated for you.