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Attio Reports are powerful but easy to over-build. Twenty dashboards no one opens. Or under-build — a single pipeline view that is somehow the only chart. The right Reports library has 6-10 dashboards covering every recurring decision your team makes. Here is the discipline.
Who this is forRevOps leads and ops generalists building the Reports library for the first time — or anyone whose CEO asked 'can we see closed-won by source this quarter?' and the answer was 'give me a day.' If your weekly leadership meeting still runs on spreadsheet exports, this tutorial is for you.
What you'll need
Step 1
Build Reports backward from the recurring decisions leadership needs to make. If a chart does not answer a real decision, it does not belong in the library.
List the 5-10 questions your leadership asks every week or month. Examples: "How much pipeline does each AE have?" "What is our weighted forecast for the quarter?" "Which lead sources convert to closed-won?" "Are we hitting MQL targets?"
For each question, sketch the chart that answers it. Bar chart? Funnel? Trend over time? Pie of distributions?
Resist the urge to build 'cool' charts that do not map to a decision. Every chart in the library should be one a stakeholder loses sleep over not seeing.
Group the questions by audience: Exec dashboard (forecast, hit rate, ARR), Sales dashboard (pipeline, activity, conversion rates), Marketing dashboard (MQL volume, conversion to SQL, source attribution).
Each audience gets one dashboard. Resist the urge to mix.
Step 2
Attio Reports support several chart types: Number, Bar, Line, Funnel, Table. Each answers a different question shape.
Number: best for "what is the current value of X?" — Current pipeline, MRR, deals closed this month, hit-rate %. Use big and prominent on dashboards.
Bar: best for "how does X compare across Y?" — pipeline by owner, deals by stage, ARR by industry, conversion rate by source.
Line: best for "how is X trending over time?" — pipeline growth, weekly closed-won, monthly new MQLs, quarterly hit rate.
Funnel: best for "what is the conversion through stages?" — MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Closed Won. Powerful for finding leakage.
Table: best for "give me the underlying records" — list of stuck deals, list of high-value MQLs to call, list of accounts up for renewal next quarter.
Step 3
Start with these 5. Add only when a new decision repeatedly needs data you do not have.
1. Sales Pipeline dashboard: Number (total pipeline, weighted pipeline), Bar (pipeline by AE), Funnel (stage conversion), Table (top 20 open deals by value).
2. Sales Activity dashboard: Number (calls/emails this week), Line (activity trend), Bar (activity by AE), Table (reps with low activity this week).
3. Forecast dashboard: Number (committed, best case, weighted), Line (forecast vs actual by week), Funnel (forecast confidence stages).
4. Marketing Handoff dashboard: Number (MQLs this month), Funnel (MQL → SQL → Opp → Won), Bar (MQLs by source), Line (conversion-rate trend).
5. Customer Success dashboard: Number (active customers, ARR, NRR), Bar (renewals next 90 days by ARR), Table (at-risk accounts).
Step 4
Every Report has a time range, filter, and group. Lock them once. Time ranges should match the decision cadence — weekly reviews use weekly ranges.
For weekly review dashboards: time range = "Last 7 days" or "This week" or "Last 4 weeks (trend)."
For monthly executive dashboards: time range = "This month," "Last 3 months," "This quarter."
For quarterly board prep: time range = "This quarter," "Last 4 quarters (trend)."
Filter every chart to exclude noise: Status ≠ Closed Lost (for pipeline charts), Owner is set (skip orphaned records), Created > [account inception date] (exclude prehistoric data).
Group-bys should match the dimension leadership cares about — owner, source, stage, industry. Test each group-by with a stakeholder before locking.
Step 5
Workspace settings → Permissions → Reports access. Share dashboards only with the audience that uses them. Avoid blanket sharing.
For each dashboard, set Sharing: Workspace-wide (everyone), Team-specific (just Sales, just CS), Specific people (just leadership).
Default to less sharing rather than more. Sales reps do not need to see exec ARR dashboards; execs do not need to see SDR activity dashboards.
For external sharing (board members, investors): use the "Share publicly with a link" feature carefully. Public links can be revoked but cannot be password-protected on most plans.
For sensitive financial data (ARR, salary, equity): consider keeping it in a separate tool (Excel, Google Sheets) entirely.
Step 6
A dashboard that nobody opens is worse than no dashboard — it is debt. Anchor each dashboard to a recurring meeting that uses it.
Weekly sales pipeline review (Monday 9 AM): open the Sales Pipeline dashboard, walk the top 20 deals, identify stuck ones.
Weekly marketing-sales sync (Tuesday 10 AM): open the Marketing Handoff dashboard, review MQL → SQL conversion and source quality.
Monthly executive review (first Tuesday of the month): open the Forecast + ARR dashboards, walk through the quarter.
Quarterly board prep (week before board): export the Exec Forecast dashboard to PDF, annotate, distribute.
If a dashboard is not the centerpiece of any recurring meeting, ask whether it should exist. The library should be small and load-bearing.
Common mistakes
Building dashboards before identifying the recurring decisions
What goes wrong: Workspace has 12 dashboards. The exec opens one per quarter. Sales managers open two per month. Most are never viewed. RevOps wasted 2-3 weeks building reports nobody uses — at $80-120/hr loaded, that is $6-10K of operator time on shelf-ware.
How to avoid: Reverse the process. Identify the 5-10 recurring decisions. Build one dashboard per decision-audience pair. Stop there.
Mixing exec, sales, and marketing data in one mega-dashboard
What goes wrong: The exec dashboard has 18 charts. Leadership scans it for the one number they care about and ignores the rest. The dashboard becomes background — nobody references it in meetings.
How to avoid: One audience per dashboard. Exec dashboard has 4-6 high-level numbers + trends. Sales dashboard has the operational detail. Marketing dashboard has the funnel.
Using the wrong chart type for the question
What goes wrong: Pipeline progression shown as a bar chart (Deal value per Stage) instead of a Funnel. Leakage between stages is invisible. The team optimizes the wrong stage. On a $1M open pipeline, fixing a 10-point conversion gap on the right stage is worth $100K — leaving the wrong chart type up means that gap stays invisible for quarters.
How to avoid: Map question shape to chart type. "Compare across categories" = Bar. "Trend over time" = Line. "Conversion through stages" = Funnel. "Current value" = Number.
Time ranges that do not match the review cadence
What goes wrong: Weekly review dashboard shows 'This year to date.' Stuck deals from January look fine because they are buried in 11 months of data. Recent leakage is invisible.
How to avoid: Match time range to cadence. Weekly review = last 7 or last 4 weeks. Monthly = last 1-3 months. Quarterly = last quarter + trend.
No anchored review meeting — dashboards just exist
What goes wrong: Dashboards get built, announced once, then drift. After three months they are stale (group-bys outdated, filters no longer apply, time ranges wrong). Nobody owns them. The org goes back to spreadsheet exports for every leadership meeting — call it 4-6 hours/week of RevOps time, or $1,500-3,000/month of recurring waste.
How to avoid: Every dashboard has (1) an owner, (2) a recurring meeting that uses it, (3) a quarterly review for staleness. No anchor meeting = no dashboard.
Sharing every dashboard workspace-wide
What goes wrong: Sales reps see exec ARR + salary data. Reps see other reps' personal pipelines. Information leaks both ways. Trust erodes.
How to avoid: Default to narrower sharing. Use Workspace settings → Permissions → Reports to restrict per-dashboard. Audit quarterly.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to set up the Attio data model without making a mess
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Reports are the part of Attio leadership feels most directly — and the part most teams under-invest in. A specialist will design the canonical dashboard set in 1-2 days, train your team on the review cadence, and set up the quarterly hygiene. EverestX Attio specialists run $400-1,200/month at $14-16/hr.
See specialist rates
The Free plan has basic charts on saved views (count of records, sum of an attribute) but not full Reports + dashboards. Plus and Pro unlock the Reports module with multiple chart types, dashboards, and sharing. Most teams upgrade to Plus specifically for Reports once weekly leadership meetings need real data.
Yes — Reports → click dashboard → Share → Export PDF. For scheduled delivery, build a Workflow that runs on a schedule, captures the dashboard URL, and posts a Slack message with a screenshot link. Native scheduled email delivery is on the roadmap as of 2026.
Attio Reports are simpler and faster to build than Salesforce reports (which require an admin with reporting certifications) and roughly on par with HubSpot Pro reports for most B2B SaaS use cases. Attio loses to both on advanced analytics — multi-touch attribution, complex cohort analysis, custom SQL — which most teams under 50 reps do not need anyway.
Yes — any object (standard or custom) supports Reports on Plus / Pro. Group by any attribute, filter by any condition, count or sum any numeric attribute. Custom objects with their own lifecycle (Subscriptions, Contracts) often deserve their own dashboard alongside Deals.
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