6 Salesforce Report Limitations that are Holding You Back (with Solution)

While Salesforce has many capabilities to collect and manage your business data, it lacks the tools to effectively organize, analyze, and operationalize this data. 

Salesforce’s reporting function falls short in many aspects—from limited customization and complicated setup to skewed data analysis. You might also struggle to integrate external data sources to build a unified hub for all customer data. 

These limitations can weaken your decision-making process and restrict the impact you can create with customer data. 

That’s why I wrote this article to help you identify the biggest Salesforce reports limitations and tackle each challenge with the right solution. 

Let’s look at these challenges first. 

6 critical issues in Salesforce Reports that restrict data-driven decision-making

So many companies use Salesforce as a centralized hub for collecting and analyzing data. But, Salesforce reports don’t give you enough options to unify data from multiple sources and navigate these datasets to make crucial decisions. 

I found six main Salesforce reports limitations that can break your business data workflows. 

1. Salesforce report limits data to 2,000 rows in view; 100k in export

A clear drawback of Salesforce reports is its limited capacity to capture and export data. You can only collect 2,000 rows of data in a formatted report. And you can export up to 100,000 rows and 100 columns in the XLSX format. These limits are very restricting, even for small teams. 

Whether you’re using Salesforce to collect lead data, understand customer behavior, or any other use case, these limitations on reporting data make the platform unscalable for the long run. 

The Fix

Use a big data spreadsheet platform like Gigasheet to capture up to 1 billion rows of data without breaking a sweat. Unlike Salesforce, Gigasheet is designed to scale your data analytics and create, edit, share massive datasets for different business use cases.  

2. No custom reporting in some editions

One of the first issues you might face with Salesforce reports is related to which edition you’re using. Salesforce offers six different editions of the platform—Essentials, Starter, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer—for different user segments. 

Since the Essentials and Starter editions are designed for small businesses and startups, they don’t include advanced features like custom reporting.

Beyond this, you also have to consider Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience editions. Reporting tools also vary between these two versions and you’ll have different features available to set up custom reports in both versions. 

The Fix

Gigasheet’s functions make it easy to customize your reports and zoom in on specific aspects. You can perform so many different actions in a few clicks, such as:

• Segment similar data into groups 
• Filter and sort data for better coherence
• Use functions and formulas to test + analyze
• Expand the dataset based on specific conditions
• Enrich existing data by integrating different data sources

So, integrate integrate Gigasheet with your Salesforce instance and set custom functions to create more relevant and informative reports. 

3. Constraints caused by limited admin access

If you work in a large organization, your Salesforce setup is likely managed by a few individuals in the upper management. This means, only these individuals can access all the admin controls and make modifications in the reporting setup. 

This limited admin access can create dependencies and delays in your reporting function. Every time you want to modify or optimize any part of your Salesforce reports setup, you have to send a request to the upper management and wait for their approval. 

The Fix

You can work with your entire team on Gigasheet with a dedicated shared workspace. Invite your teammates to your workspace and access sheet history to stay on top of any changes. You can also leave comments and mention anyone through comments for more specific communication.

4. Complicated interface and costly setup 

Salesforce isn’t the most user-friendly software. You need a level of expertise to configure different parts of the platform and build your reporting structure. This complex and lengthy setup process is another huge challenge for Salesforce users. 

Finding your way around Salesforce’s interface can take significant effort. You also have to spend enough time figuring out different aspects of the reporting function. 

Here’s a Salesforce user explaining how they’re unable to stop auto-filtering in their report: 

Most teams delegate the reporting setup task to dedicated experts and third-party solution providers. Investing in a service provider can add heavily to your operating costs and might not be a viable option for all businesses.

The Fix

Gigasheet gives you the familiar spreadsheet interface of MS Excel and Sheets with intuitive editing capabilities. You won’t have to spend time figuring out the best ways to use the app. Just sign up and get started with any dataset! 

And the best part, if you get stuck anywhere, you can access how-to guides for every feature to get back to your tasks quickly.

5. Fewer customization options 

While Salesforce offers multiple report types, you might want to customize the standard formats as per your business goals and data requirements. A customized data pipeline can produce more nuanced insights for accurate predictions and airtight planning. 

But Salesforce doesn’t give you enough options to customize a standard reporting function. You need admin access to create new custom objects. And even then, the reports feature isn’t flexible enough to arrange and analyze data the way you want. 

The Fix

Whether you want to combine multiple files, enrich the existing dataset, or search within your reports, Gigasheet offers several options to customize how you capture, analyze, and consume data. 

Besides all its editing functions, you can also use Gigasheet’s AI Sheet Assistant to perform any task in seconds by simply typing out a prompt. Simply instruct the chatbot about what you want to do, and it’ll perform the action in a few seconds. 

6. Slow performance and glitches

Another common complaint among Salesforce users is about its slow performance. The Lightning version works extremely slow and makes it difficult to add filters or improve your reports. 

While this issue was shared several times in the Trailblazer Community, I didn’t find any substantial response on this. Here’s another user sharing their experience with the painfully slow reports function in Salesforce Lightning:

The Fix

From my experience of using Gigasheet to analyze datasets, I can tell you that the tool combines the convenience of spreadsheets with the power of big data. No matter how massive your database is, you won’t experience lagging or crashes because Gigasheet operates with a powerful big data infrastructure. 

‍

Related: Schedule Salesforce data exports

Get the best out of your Salesforce reports! 

I get it—Salesforce is a CRM platform with so many features for different use cases. That means, Salesforce isn’t purpose-built for data analysis and reporting. 

Instead, you can integrate Gigasheet with Salesforce to create more data-rich reports. Get started in seconds, collaborate with your entire team, and create customized reports—all on a single platform. 

Try Gigasheet yourself to see how you can make your business reporting setup more effective and thorough.