Your manager gives you raw sales transactions and asks for a simple report: total sales, average order value, highest sale, lowest sale, number of orders, and sales by region. This project turns beginner Excel skills into a real office-style report.

Project goal

The goal is to build a clean sales report from raw data. You will not just read a tutorial - you will create a workbook with multiple sheets, formulas, summaries and a dashboard-style output.

Project workflow

1Raw Data
2Formulas
3Summary
4Dashboard
5QA

Workbook structure

The project workbook uses four main sheets:

  • Raw Data - original sales transactions.
  • Summary - total sales, average sale, highest sale, lowest sale and orders.
  • Dashboard - final view for quick reading.
  • Project Checklist - steps to track your work.
Professional rule: Keep source data, calculations and final reporting views separate.

Dashboard KPI example

Total Sales₹73.4k
Orders12
Top RegionCentral

Build steps

  1. Review the Raw Data sheet and confirm all headers are clear.
  2. Calculate Sales using Quantity multiplied by Unit Price.
  3. Create summary metrics using SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, MIN and COUNT.
  4. Create region-level summary using SUMIF and COUNTIF.
  5. Create category-level summary.
  6. Build a dashboard KPI section.
  7. Apply formatting so the final report is easy to read.
  8. Review formulas before considering the report complete.
💡
Project habit: Always keep a checklist. Beginners usually miss small steps like formatting numbers, checking ranges or naming sheets properly.
⚠️
Common mistake: Publishing a report without checking formulas. A professional report must be verified before sharing.
🧪 Practice Project

Build the sales report

Download one ZIP file containing the practice workbook, challenge workbook, solution workbook, project checklist, quiz and answer key.

📦 Download Lesson 9 ResourcesWorks as a standalone file and after website deployment

Mini assignment

After completing the guided practice, open the challenge workbook and rebuild the sales report without looking at the solution file. Then compare your workbook with the solution workbook.

Quick quiz

  1. Which sheet should store original transactions?
  2. Which function calculates total sales?
  3. Why should a dashboard be separate from raw data?
  4. Which function can summarize sales by region?

Answers: Raw Data; SUM; to keep final view clean and protect source data; SUMIF.

FAQ

Yes. It uses the beginner skills covered in Lessons 1 to 8.
Yes. After improving formatting and adding your own comments, it can become a beginner Excel portfolio example.