The questions managers actually ask
Reporting tools tend to offer infinite flexibility and no answers. Golden Porch ships the dozen reports most sales teams need already built, and makes the rest possible without a query language.
Available on the first day, not the first quarter
These exist as soon as there is data to fill them. No dashboard assembly, no consultant.
| Report | Answers | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline by stage | Where is everything right now | Weekly review |
| Stage conversion | Where deals fall out | Process diagnosis |
| Time in stage | How long each step really takes | Forecast calibration |
| Ageing deals | What has stopped moving | Weekly review |
| Forecast movement | What changed since last period | Management reporting |
| Activity by owner | Who is doing what | Coaching |
| Lead source performance | Which channels produce deals | Marketing review |
| Loss reasons | Why deals are lost | Quarterly analysis |
| Data quality | Which records are incomplete | Hygiene |
Custom reports without SQL
Pick the records, choose the filters, group by something, and select how it should be displayed. If you can describe the report in a sentence, you can usually build it in about a minute.
Saved reports can be shared with a team, pinned to a dashboard, or scheduled to arrive by email — which in most organisations is where reports are actually read.
- Filter on any field, standard or custom
- Group, summarise and compare against a previous period
- Export to CSV, or read the same data through the API
Dashboards
A dashboard is a set of saved reports arranged on one screen. Different roles need different ones — a rep wants their own deals and tasks, a manager wants the team view, and a director wants movement over time. Dashboards can be assigned by role so each person opens something relevant.
Data quality reporting
The data quality report lists records missing fields that your own rules mark as required, deals with no next step, and contacts with no activity in a defined period. It is deliberately unglamorous, and it is usually the report that changes behaviour most.
On trusting the numbers: reporting inherits whatever discipline exists upstream. If stages are applied inconsistently, a conversion report will produce a confident and wrong answer. The stage criteria described on the pipeline page are what make this section worth reading.
Access to the underlying data
Everything visible in a report is available through the API, and any view exports to CSV. Teams running their own warehouse can pull the raw records on a schedule rather than working from exports.
See it against your own numbers
Tell us what you report on today and where the current answer is hard to get. That is usually the fastest way to tell whether this fits.
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