Running total in Tableau - Dashboard Guide

Dashboard Mode - Running total

Business Question

How can we track the cumulative sales over months to see the total sales growing over time?

Sample Data

Month	Sales
January	100
February	150
March	200
April	250
May	300
June	350

Dashboard Components

• KPI Card: Total Sales
  Formula: SUM([Sales])
  Result: 1350
• Line Chart: Monthly Sales
  X-axis: Month (January to June)
  Y-axis: Sales
  Shows sales for each month as points connected by a line.
• Line Chart: Running Total of Sales
  X-axis: Month
  Y-axis: Running Total Sales
  Formula (Table Calculation in Tableau): RUNNING_SUM(SUM([Sales]))
  Results:
  January: 100
  February: 250
  March: 450
  April: 700
  May: 1000
  June: 1350

Dashboard Layout

+----------------------+-------------------------+
|      Total Sales      |     Monthly Sales       |
|       (KPI Card)      |       (Line Chart)      |
+----------------------+-------------------------+
|           Running Total of Sales (Line Chart)           |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

Interactivity

A filter for Month allows selecting a range of months. When the filter changes, both line charts and the KPI card update to show sales and running totals only for the selected months.

Self Check

If you add a filter to show only months from March to June, which components update and what is the new total sales?

• All components update.
• New Total Sales = 200 + 250 + 300 + 350 = 1100
• Running Total for March = 200, April = 450, May = 750, June = 1100

Key Result

Dashboard showing monthly sales and their running total with a total sales KPI.