How to Calculate Total Sales in Tableau

Calculating total sales is one of the first and most fundamental tasks you'll tackle in Tableau. It’s the cornerstone of almost any business dashboard, providing the high-level metric from which you'll drill down to find deeper insights. This guide will walk you through several methods to calculate and display total sales, from the most basic drag-and-drop to more powerful and flexible calculations.

First, A Quick Look at Your Data Structure

Before you can calculate anything, it's essential to understand how Tableau sees your data. Data fields are typically categorized as either Dimensions or Measures.

• Dimensions: These are categorical fields that contain qualitative data you use to slice and dice your numbers. Think of fields like Product Category, Region, or Order Date. When you drag a dimension into the view, it creates labels or headers.
• Measures: These are numerical fields that you can perform mathematical operations on. This is where your Sales, Profit, and Quantity fields live. When you drag a measure into the view, Tableau automatically tries to aggregate it - usually by summing it up.

For your total sales calculation to work, your sales data must be recognized by Tableau as a numeric measure. If it's not, you can easily change the data type from the Data Source page or by right-clicking the field in the Data pane and selecting Change Data Type.

Method 1: The Simple Drag-and-Drop

The fastest way to see your total sales in Tableau requires no formulas at all. Tableau's default behavior is designed to make this operation intuitive and quick. Let's use the Sample - Superstore dataset that comes with Tableau as an example.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Connect to the Sample - Superstore data source.
2. On the left side of your worksheet, in the "Data" pane, you’ll see your dimensions and measures. Find the Sales measure under the "Tables" section.
3. Click and drag the Sales measure onto the Text square in the Marks card.

That's it. Tableau will instantly display a single number in your view. This number is the sum of every sales transaction in your entire dataset.

You’ll notice that the green pill in the Marks card says SUM(Sales). Tableau automatically wrapped your Sales measure in a SUM() aggregation because it’s the most common way to aggregate a measure like sales. You can click on this pill to change the aggregation to Average, Median, Count, Minimum, Maximum, and more.

Visualizing Total Sales by Dimension

A single number is useful, but you'll almost always want to see total sales broken down by a dimension. This is just as easy.

• Drag the Sales measure to the Rows shelf. A vertical bar chart will appear showing the total sales.
• Next, drag a dimension like Category from the Data pane to the Columns shelf.

Now, your view displays three separate bars, each representing the total sales for the Technology, Furniture, and Office Supplies categories. Tableau is automatically calculating SUM(Sales) for each individual category a dimension provides.

Method 2: Using a Calculated Field

While the drag-and-drop method is quick, creating a calculated field for total sales is a common practice for good reason. It gives you more control and creates a reusable asset for more advanced calculations, like calculating tax or a commission rate.

How to Create a Simple Calculation:

1. Navigate to the top menu and select Analysis > Create Calculated Field.
2. A dialog box will open. Give your calculation a name. Let's call it "Total Sales."
3. In the formula editor, type the following:
4. The calculation editor will tell you "The calculation is valid" at the bottom. Click OK.

You'll now find your new "Total Sales" field in the Measures section of your Data pane. You can drag this calculated field into your view just like the original Sales field, and it will behave in the same way. The main advantage is that its aggregation (SUM) is now explicitly defined in the calculation, which can make complex nested formulas easier to build and debug later.

For example, if you wanted to calculate a 2% commission on total sales, you could now create another calculated field with the formula:

[Total Sales] * 0.02

This approach keeps your logic clean and modular.

Method 3: Level of Detail (LOD) Expressions for Fixed Grand Totals

Sometimes you need to use the grand total of all sales within another calculation that operates at a different level of detail. For instance, what if you want to show each product category's sales as a percentage of the overall grand total?

If you build a view with Category on rows and SUM(Sales) on text, your view is at the "Category" level of detail. You can't simply use SUM([Sales]) / SUM([Sales]), as that would always return 100%. An LOD expression solves this problem by allowing you to calculate a value at a different level of detail than your visualization.

Calculating a Fixed Grand Total with {FIXED}

The {FIXED} LOD expression computes a value for the entire dataset, ignoring the dimensions in your view.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Create a new calculated field and name it "Overall Grand Total Sales."
2. Enter the following formula:
3. Click OK.

Let's break down this formula:

• { ... }: The curly braces signal to Tableau that this is an LOD expression.
• FIXED: This is the type of LOD. It calculates the value independent of any dimensions in the view.
• : SUM([Sales]): This is the aggregation to perform. Here, we are summing all sales in the data source.

This calculated field now contains a single value - the grand total of all sales - that is available on every row of your underlying data. Because it's a non-aggregated value, you can use it in row-level calculations.

Putting It All Together: Calculating Percentage of Total

Now that you have your fixed grand total, you can easily calculate the percentage of total sales for each category.

1. Create another calculated field. Name it "% of Total Sales."
2. Enter this formula:
3. Format your new measure as a Percentage by right-clicking on it in the Data pane, selecting Default Properties > Number Format > Percentage.
4. Build your view:

Your view now correctly shows how much each category contributes to the total sales. You might wonder why we used MIN() in the formula. Since the {FIXED} LOD value is the same for every row, MIN(), MAX(), AVG(), or ATTR() would all return the same correct result. However, you must use an aggregation because SUM([Sales]) is an aggregate value, and Tableau won't let you mix aggregate and non-aggregate values in a single calculation.

Bonus Tip: Using Tableau's Built-in Grand Totals

For purely display purposes, Tableau has a simple way to show grand totals in your tables without creating any calculations.

• Create a text table with Category on Rows and SUM(Sales) on Text.
• From the top menu, go to Analysis > Totals.
• Select Show Column Grand Totals.

A grand total will immediately appear at the bottom of your table. This is perfect for visual reference but, as we saw above, you cannot use this dynamically generated total inside another calculation. For that, you'll always need to reach for an LOD expression.

Final Thoughts

From a simple drag-and-drop to a versatile LOD expression, Tableau gives you multiple ways to calculate total sales. Starting with the basics and progressing to more advanced methods like calculated fields will enable you to answer nearly any business question related to your sales performance. Mastering these options forms a strong foundation for building insightful and dynamic dashboards.

While learning the nuances of a powerful tool like Tableau is an invaluable skill, it often comes with a steep learning curve of calculated fields, filters, and LODs just to surface basic insights. At times, the process can feel more like data wrangling than data analysis. At Graphed, we focus on simplifying this process. Connect your data sources once, then just ask your questions in plain English - like "What were my total sales last quarter by category as a percentage of the total?" We generate and update your dashboards in seconds, so you can skip the complex configurations and get straight to the answers. Find out how easy data analysis can be with Graphed.