Power BI Dashboard for Retail: Stores & Online

Retail runs on margin, and margin hides in the gap between systems. Store takings sit in your EPOS, online orders in your e-commerce platform, stock in a separate tool, and costs in the finance ledger. Each report looks fine alone, yet none of them tells you the one thing you need: what is actually making money across the whole business. A Power BI dashboard for retail brings sales, stock and margin together across bricks and online, so buyers and managers can act on the full picture in one place.

This guide covers the KPIs that matter in retail, how to bring stores and online into one view, and how to connect the systems behind them.

The KPIs that run a retail business

A good retail dashboard serves buyers, store managers and the owner, not just the year-end accounts.

Sales and demand

• Sales by product, category, channel and location
• Like-for-like sales against last year
• Best and worst sellers, ranked and trending
• Average transaction value and units per basket

Stock and availability

• Stock on hand, by location and channel
• Stock turn and days of cover
• Slow movers and ageing stock tying up cash
• Availability and stockouts on key lines

Margin and profit

• Gross margin by product, category and channel
• Markdown and discount impact on margin
• Online versus store profitability after delivery and returns
• Returns rate and its cost

The value is in joining these up. A line that is selling well but quietly losing margin to discounts, or a top seller about to run out of stock, is something you only catch when sales, stock and cost sit in one model.

Bringing stores and online into one view

Most retailers run at least two worlds: physical stores and an online channel. Each often grew its own reporting. The result is two truths that never quite match, especially around returns, click-and-collect and shared stock.

A single Power BI model fixes this by treating channel as just another way to slice the same numbers. You see total sales by product, then split by store and online whenever you want. You see one stock figure across the business, so online does not oversell what a store has already taken. And you see true margin per channel, with delivery and returns costs included, instead of flattering online figures that ignore them.

This unified view is what lets you make buying and pricing decisions for the whole business, not one channel at a time.

Connecting retail systems

Power BI connects to these through built-in connectors, APIs and gateways. Because the same product can carry different codes across till, web and stock systems, the data is best staged and matched in a warehouse first. That gives you one model where store, online and stock figures reconcile, rather than three reports that argue. This matching and reconciliation work is the heart of our data integration and warehousing service. If you sell on Shopify, our guide to connecting Shopify to Power BI covers the online side in detail.

Licensing and cost

Sharing a retail dashboard with buyers and managers needs Power BI Pro licences, at a low per-user monthly cost. Larger teams, more frequent refresh or AI features may need Premium Per User or Fabric capacity. Microsoft licensing changes regularly, so check current Microsoft pricing as of 2026.

UK Power BI day rates run roughly £400 to £850 per day. A scope-locked build typically ranges from £8,000 to £14,000, depending on the number of channels, sources and the depth of the margin logic. A short paid review (£2,000 to £4,000, fee credited toward a build) confirms scope and data readiness first. Confirm current pricing as of 2026.

Getting started

If your store and online numbers never quite agree, and margin is a year-end surprise rather than a daily view, one governed model is the fastest fix. Explore our full Power BI consultancy, or see how we approach a Power BI dashboard for e-commerce for the online side.

When you are ready, book a Trusted Numbers Review. We will map your channels and systems and recommend the right build, at a fixed price agreed before any work starts.