Case study / Residential Development
Salesforce to Power BI: Automating Sales Stock Reporting for a Leading Housebuilder
Background
Salesforce for sales. Excel for reporting. A process that couldn't scale.
Our client is a leading housebuilder managing an active portfolio of residential developments and thousands of units at every stage of the sales process — from available stock and reservations through to forward sales, closings and handover. At the time of this engagement, Salesforce was the platform their sales team worked in day to day, and it did that job well.
The problem was reporting. Salesforce's native reporting tools are designed around individual objects and pre-built report types — not the kind of cross-object, multi-metric stock analysis the sales team and leadership needed. The workaround was a manual process: export multiple Salesforce reports individually, compile them in Excel using complex formulae, and repeat the exercise every time an updated view was needed. As the portfolio grew, the process became increasingly time-consuming and error-prone. The business engaged Acumine to replace it.
Manual, repetitive reporting process
Every update to the sales stock report required manually exporting multiple Salesforce reports and re-compiling them in Excel. With the report needed regularly throughout the day, this represented a significant and recurring drain on team time.
Salesforce reporting couldn't do the job
Native Salesforce reporting works within individual report types. Producing a unified view across Developments, Properties and Bookings — with the calculations the business needed — wasn't achievable within the platform's built-in tools.
No real-time visibility for leadership
Because the report was only as current as the last manual update, leadership and the sales team were often working from data that was hours old — particularly problematic on high-activity days when the position was changing frequently.
Complexity that Excel couldn't handle cleanly
Multiple sales categories, unit types, development phases, and the need to toggle between Ready to Snag and Ready to Occupy dates meant the Excel model was growing in complexity — making it fragile, hard to maintain and difficult to extend.
What Salesforce captures
Rich sales data across three connected objects — underused for reporting.
The business managed its entire sales pipeline in Salesforce — from development and phase setup through to individual unit records and booking activity. The data was structured, detailed and updated in real time by the sales team. The challenge was that getting management insight from it required going outside the platform.
Developments & phases
Portfolio structure and build programme
Each development was broken down by phase, with build programme dates including Ready to Snag and Ready to Occupy milestones. This was the foundation of the portfolio structure — and the basis for understanding stock availability and timing.
Properties
Unit-level detail across the portfolio
Every unit in every development was recorded in Salesforce with its unit type, bedroom count, sales category and current status. Understanding the composition of stock — and how it mapped to demand — required combining this data with both build programme and booking information.
Bookings
Sales activity and forward book
Reservation and closing activity is captured against each unit — recording sales status, forecast close dates and the information needed to track progress against the annual sales forecast. Combining booking data with the property and development records was the core challenge native Salesforce reporting couldn't solve.
The solution
A live Power BI reporting platform built directly on Salesforce data
Acumine replaced the manual export and Excel process with a Power BI reporting platform connecting directly to Salesforce Objects — not Salesforce's own report exports. By querying the underlying Development, Property and Booking tables directly via the Salesforce connector, we built a data model that could handle the full complexity of the business's sales reporting in a single, automated environment.
The platform refreshed Salesforce data eight times each working day, giving the sales team and leadership a continuously updated view without any manual intervention. A supplementary data feed from the business's sales forecast file meant forecast vs actual performance was tracked automatically alongside the live Salesforce position.
Main dashboard
Portfolio-wide stock and sales performance
The central view of the business — opening stock, current year builds, year-to-date closings and available stock across all active developments. A toggle switched between Ready to Snag and Ready to Occupy as the basis for build volume calculations, with developments organised in an expandable hierarchy by phase. Active developments with remaining units were surfaced automatically; completed developments were filtered out unless they were closing in the current year.
Sales forecast tracking
Forecast vs actual — with gap to target calculated automatically
Each development's sales forecast for the current year was drawn from the business's planning data and placed alongside the live Salesforce position. The number of additional sales required to reach the forecast target was calculated automatically — giving the sales team and leadership a clear, always-current view of the gap without any manual calculation.
Current year forward sales
In-year pipeline and forward book
A focused view of units with a forecast close date in the current financial year — giving the sales team visibility of the near-term pipeline and supporting accurate in-year forecasting. Ten calculated metrics provide a structured breakdown of the current year position across sales categories and unit types.
Current year available stock
Remaining opportunity by unit type
A breakdown of available stock across unit types for the current year — giving the sales team and commercial leadership visibility of where remaining opportunity sits by bedroom count and property type. Sales categories including Part V, PRS and Managed Social Leasing are tracked consistently alongside private sales throughout.
Outcomes
From manual process to always-on insight
Manual reporting process eliminated
The recurring cycle of Salesforce exports, Excel compilation and manual formula maintenance was replaced entirely. The sales team and leadership access the same report, always current, without any preparation effort — freeing time that was previously spent on process rather than analysis.
Real-time visibility throughout the working day
With eight scheduled refreshes each day, the sales team and leadership could see the current Salesforce position at any point — not just when someone had time to run the manual update. On high-activity days, when the sales position was changing hour by hour, this improvement in data currency was particularly significant.
Forecast tracking without manual effort
Sales forecast vs actual comparison — and the calculation of additional sales required to hit target — was automated. What had previously required manual cross-referencing between Salesforce and the forecast was surfaced directly in the dashboard, giving the sales team an always-current view of in-year performance against plan.
A platform that grows with the business
Because the solution connected directly to Salesforce Objects rather than fixed report exports, new developments, sales categories and unit types were picked up automatically as the business added them to Salesforce. The reporting platform evolved with the business without requiring manual maintenance or structural changes to the underlying model.
Technology
Salesforce data structured for sales management in Power BI
The solution used the Salesforce Objects connector to pull Development, Property and Booking data directly from Salesforce into a Microsoft Fabric data model, structured to support the complex calculations and cross-object analysis the business needed. Power BI delivered the reporting layer — refreshing automatically eight times per working day, with single sign-on access for the sales team and leadership.
If your business uses Salesforce to manage housing sales and relies on manual exports to produce management reporting, Acumine can build the same automated reporting platform for you — connecting directly to your Salesforce data and delivering the stock and sales insight your team needs without the manual overhead.
Work with Acumine
Using Salesforce for housing sales and still relying on manual exports?
If your sales team is spending time on Salesforce exports and Excel compilation rather than selling, Acumine can build the automated reporting platform that replaces it — giving your sales team and leadership a live, structured view of stock, forward sales and forecast performance without the manual overhead.