Reporting and KPIs

What Are KPI Reports: Definition and Examples

A KPI report pairs each metric with its target and status. What one contains, how it differs from other reports, and how to build one in Power BI Goals.

Sajagan Thirugnanam

Updated

September 23, 2026

A KPI report is a document or dashboard that shows a small set of key performance indicators next to the target each one is measured against, updated on a fixed schedule, so a team can tell at a glance whether it is on track. What separates it from a general business report is scope: a KPI report tracks a defined number, a target and a status, not a full narrative or investigation. The rest of this post covers what belongs in one, how it differs from other report shapes, and a worked example of building one as a scorecard in Power BI Goals.

What a KPI report contains

At minimum, a KPI report needs:

The current value of each tracked metric.
The target that value is measured against.
A status showing whether it is on track, at risk, or behind.
A history showing how the value has moved over time.

A metric with no target attached is just a number. A KPI report is what a metric becomes once a target, a status and a review cadence are attached to it.

How a KPI report differs from other report types

A KPI report is one shape among several a business builds. An operational report might show the same metric with no target attached, refreshed hourly for a team acting on it same-day. A strategic report might set a target but review it quarterly, alongside several other metrics in a single narrative document. A KPI report specifically pairs a value, a target and a status, and stays narrow enough that a reader can scan it in one screen.

For the full breakdown of report types by audience and refresh cadence, see our guide to the 5 types of report writing for business analytics. Deciding which KPIs to track and who owns each one is a separate question, covered in our guide to building an analytics strategy. For the wider reporting pipeline a KPI report sits inside, from data collection through distribution, see our complete guide to BI reporting.

A worked example: a KPI report as a Power BI Goals scorecard

Power BI's dedicated feature for this is Goals, presented in the product as a scorecard: a single page listing each KPI with its current value, target, status and history. The example below walks through setting one up.

What you need before you start

A Power BI Pro license to author, share, and add check-ins.
An Admin, Member or Contributor role in the workspace that will hold the scorecard.
Build permission on any semantic model a goal connects to.
For viewers with no Pro or Premium Per User license, the scorecard's workspace needs to sit on a Fabric F64-or-larger capacity (or a legacy Premium P capacity). Otherwise every viewer needs their own Pro license.

Building the scorecard

Setting up a KPI report as a scorecard is five steps:

Create the scorecard. From the Scorecards hub in the Power BI service, select New scorecard, name it, then move it out of My workspace into the workspace the rest of the team can reach.
Add a goal for each KPI. Select New goal and set a name, one or more owners, a current value (a manual number or a connection to an existing report visual), a final target, a status, and a start and due date.
Roll up subgoals where a KPI breaks into parts. For example, a company-wide revenue goal with one subgoal per region, using SUM as the rollup aggregation, so the parent goal updates automatically as each region's value changes. This is illustrative: the aggregation type and grouping depend on how the underlying metric is structured.
Automate the status with a rule instead of updating it by hand, so the goal recolors itself whenever the connected data refreshes or a check-in is added.
Check in on any goal with no live connection, recording a date, a value, a status and a note explaining why, so the reason behind a change is visible later without reconstructing it.

Rollups: keeping a parent goal current without a report connection

A rollup subgoal's value aggregates into its parent automatically, recalculating every time a subgoal value changes and keeping its own history. Four aggregation types are available:

SUM: adds the subgoal values together.
AVERAGE: averages the subgoal values.
MIN: shows the lowest subgoal value.
MAX: shows the highest subgoal value.

Rollups work whether the subgoals underneath are manual or connected, so a parent goal can stay current even when its parts come from different sources.

Check-ins: how a manual goal gets updated

For a manual goal, a check-in is the only way its value changes: pick a date, enter the value, choose a status, and optionally add a note. For a connected goal, a check-in only lets you pick a date and a status. The date autopopulates the value for that day from the connected report, and the value itself cannot be overridden.

Status rules: automating the color

A status rule triggers a change based on a value, a percent of target met, a date, or a combination of the three. Multiple rules can run on the same goal, evaluated in a priority order you can reorder by dragging. Connected goals re-evaluate their rules every time the data refreshes; manual goals re-evaluate on every check-in.

Known limits

A scorecard has a maximum of 1,000 goals and a maximum of four subgoal levels. Goals do not support row-level security or bring-your-own-key, cannot be published to the web, and are not supported in embedded analytics or a Multi-Geo capacity. None of these apply to the ordinary case of a single team's KPI scorecard, but they matter if a scorecard is meant to scale across an organization with row-level security already in place elsewhere.

Scorecard vs a table or matrix

Some teams build a KPI report as a plain table instead of using Goals, particularly when every metric already lives in one semantic model and nobody needs a manual check-in or a note. A Power BI table or matrix visual can show a current value next to a target with conditional formatting, and its native Fixed width column setting keeps columns aligned when the report lists many KPIs in rows. See our guide to fixed column widths in Power BI tables for that layout.

What a table cannot do on its own is the part Goals adds: shared ownership per goal, a check-in trail with notes, and automated status rules that need no DAX measure behind them.

FAQs

How often should I generate KPI reports?

Match the cadence to how quickly the metric moves and how often a decision depends on it: operational metrics reviewed daily or weekly, strategic metrics reviewed monthly or quarterly. In a Power BI Goals scorecard, a goal's own tracking cycle setting controls the interval used to calculate the trend shown under its value, separate from how often the underlying semantic model refreshes.

What should I do if my KPIs aren't meeting targets?

Check the check-in notes and the status rule history first. A note attached to a check-in records the reason at the time the status changed, rather than requiring anyone to reconstruct it later. Then work through the KPI-selection and ownership steps in our analytics strategy guide to decide whether the target, the owner or the underlying process needs to change.