How to Make a Scorecard in Tableau

Creating a polished scorecard in Tableau is one of the best ways to track your most important metrics at a glance. Instead of digging through dense tables, you can build a clean, high-level view that tells you instantly whether you’re winning or losing. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to build a dynamic KPI scorecard from scratch.

What is a Scorecard and Why Use One in Tableau?

A scorecard, often called a KPI dashboard, is a simple visual report that displays key performance indicators (KPIs) in a clear, concise format. Think of it as the control panel for your business, team, or project. It usually features "big numbers" that show your current performance, often alongside comparisons to a previous period or a target to provide context.

For example, a marketing scorecard might show:

• Total Website Sessions this month, with a small arrow indicating if it's up or down from last month.
• New Leads Generated this week versus your weekly goal.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for the current quarter compared to the last quarter.

The goal isn't deep analysis, it's rapid monitoring. Building one in Tableau allows you to create a dynamic, automatically refreshing view that gives stakeholders the numbers they need without any extra noise.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

Before you jump into Tableau, a little prep work goes a long way. Your data should ideally be structured in a way that Tableau can easily understand. This typically means having your data in a "tidy" format, where:

• Each row represents a single observation (like a sale, a website visit, or a support ticket).
• Each column represents a variable (like a date, a sales amount, or a customer name).

Most importantly, ensure you have a date field. Almost every scorecard relies on tracking performance over time, so having a clean date column is essential for making comparisons like month-over-month or year-over-year.

Once your data is in a good place (in Excel, a Google Sheet, or a database), connect to it from Tableau by clicking "Connect to Data" and selecting your source.

Step 2: Build Your First KPI Card

The core strategy for building a scorecard in Tableau is to create one separate worksheet for each KPI. Later, you'll assemble all these individual worksheets' "cards" onto a single dashboard canvas. Let’s build a "Total Sales" card as our first example.

Open a new worksheet and name it something clear, like "Sales KPI."

Displaying the Main KPI Number

The first thing a scorecard needs is the big, attention-grabbing number. This is the main metric for your KPI.

1. From the Data pane on the left, find your primary measure - in our case, let’s assume it’s a field named Sales.
2. Drag the Sales measure and drop it onto the Text mark in the Marks card.

You’ll now see a number appear in your worksheet view. It's a start, but it's just a raw number without any context. Let's make it bigger and more visible. Click on the Text mark, then click the three dots (...) to open the editor. Highlight the text inside, and use the formatting options at the top to increase the font size (say, to 24pt) and make it bold.

Step 3: Add Context with Comparison Calculations

A KPI without context is just a number. Is $100,000 in sales good? It depends entirely on whether you did $50,000 or $200,000 last month. To add this context, we need to create a calculated field that shows performance against a previous period.

Let's calculate the percentage difference from the previous month.

Create a "Difference from Previous" Calculation

1. Right-click on your Sales measure in the Data pane and select Create > Calculated Field.
2. Name this calculation "Sales MoM % Change".
3. Enter the following formula:

(ZN(SUM([Sales])) - ZN(LOOKUP(SUM([Sales]), -1))) / ZN(LOOKUP(SUM([Sales]), -1))

Let's break that down:

• SUM([Sales]) gives you the sales for the current period.
• LOOKUP(SUM([Sales]), -1) is a powerful table calculation function that "looks up" the value of SUM(Sales) from a different position in your partition—in this case, one step backward, which corresponds to the previous month.
• ZN() stands for "Zero Null." It wraps each part of the formula to ensure that if a previous period has no data (resulting in a null), it's treated as zero, preventing your entire calculation from breaking.

Click OK to save the calculation. Now, drag your new "Sales MoM % Change" calculated field onto the Text mark, just like you did with the main sales number.

Go back into the Text editor, and arrange the text so the percentage change appears below the main number in a smaller font size.

Step 4: Add Up/Down Visual Indicators

Numbers are great, but symbols are faster to process. A quick up or down arrow tells the user instantly whether the trend is positive or negative. Let's create another calculated field for this.

1. Right-click anywhere in the Data pane and select Create > Calculated Field.
2. Name it "Sales Trend Indicator".
3. Enter this formula:

IF [Sales MoM % Change] > 0 THEN '▲' ELSEIF [Sales MoM % Change] < 0 THEN '▼' ELSE ' - ' END

(You can copy and paste the triangle symbols or find them on your system's character map.)

This simple IF/THEN statement checks if your percent change is positive, negative, or zero and returns the appropriate symbol.

Drag this new "Sales Trend Indicator" field onto the Text mark as well. Re-open the Text editor and place it next to your percentage change value.

Coloring the Indicators

To make it even more intuitive, let's color the arrow green for good and red for bad. We need one more calculated field for this.

1. Create another calculated field named "Indicator Color".
2. The formula is a simple boolean (true/false) statement:

[Sales MoM % Change] > 0

1. Drag this new "Indicator Color" field from the Data pane directly onto the Color mark in the Marks card.
2. Click the Color mark to edit the colors. Assign a nice green to True and a red to False.

Now, everything on the text marks—the big number, the percentage change, and the arrow—will take on the new color. To isolate the color to just the arrow and percentage, click the Text mark, open the editor, and carefully remove the coloring from the main metric while leaving it on the change metrics.

Step 5: Putting it all Together in a Dashboard

Your single KPI card worksheet is complete! Now, let's build the full scorecard.

Duplicate for Other KPIs

The fastest way to create cards for your other KPIs (like Website Sessions, New Leads, or Profit) is to duplicate your finished "Sales KPI" worksheet. Right-click the worksheet tab and select Duplicate. In the new sheet, simply drag the new primary measure (e.g., Sessions) and replace the Sales measure. You'll need to adjust your calculated fields as well to reference the new metric, but the structure and formatting are already done for you.

Repeat this process until you have a separate worksheet for each KPI you want on your scorecard.

Assemble the Dashboard

1. Create a new dashboard by clicking the New Dashboard icon at the bottom of the screen (the square with a plus sign).
2. From the Dashboard pane on the left, you'll see a list of all your worksheets. Drag your first KPI worksheet onto the canvas.
3. To arrange your scorecards neatly, use Horizontal and Vertical layout containers from the "Objects" section at the bottom left. These containers act like organizers for your dashboard items. For example, drag a Horizontal container onto the dashboard, then drag your individual KPI worksheets into that container. Tableau will automatically snap them into a clean row or column.
4. Make sure your date filter applies to all the worksheets on the dashboard. Click the dropdown on your date filter and select Apply to Worksheets > Selected Worksheets... and check all the KPI sheets used in your scorecard.
5. Finally, hide the individual worksheet titles (by right-clicking them and selecting "Hide Title") and give your dashboard a main title using a Text object. Clean up padding and borders to give your cards distinct spaces.

Best Practices for an Effective Tableau Scorecard

• Limit Your KPIs: A scorecard should be easy to read in under 10 seconds. Focus on 4-6 truly critical metrics. If you have more, consider creating a separate, more detailed dashboard.
• Use Color with Purpose: Stick to simple color cues like green for positive and red for negative. Avoid using too many different colors, which can clutter the view and confuse the user.
• Context is Everything: Never show a number in isolation. Always include a comparison, whether it's against a prior period (like last month), a target/goal, or an average.
• Keep it Clean: The power of a scorecard is its simplicity. Hide unnecessary axes, grid lines, and labels. Use spacing, borders, and layout containers to create a visually organized and professional-looking report.

Final Thoughts

Building a scorecard in Tableau is a process of creating individual, well-formatted KPI visuals on separate worksheets and then layering them together in a single dashboard. By combining big numbers with calculated fields for trends and indicators, you can turn a wall of data into an executive-level summary that provides instant insight into your performance.

While powerful tools like Tableau offer endless customization, they often come with a learning curve and require manual setup. We created Graphed because we believe getting a handle on your data shouldn't be so hard. It turns hours of report building into seconds of conversation—just connect your data sources like Google Analytics or Salesforce, then ask for what you need in plain English. Graphed automatically generates live, real-time dashboards and reports so you can get back to acting on your data instead of just trying to wrangle it.