Documentation Views and summaries
Summaries
Group a table's rows and total them with sums, averages, counts, minimums or maximums, with columns by a field or by year, quarter, month, week or day.
A summary answers "how much, by what": sales by region, hours by project, invoices by customer and month. It groups a table's rows, works out values for each group, and can spread a field across the columns, as a pivot table does. It reads its table each time it opens, so its figures follow every change.
Make a summary
- In the sidebar, choose the database's New menu, then Summary.
- Give it a Name, pick its Source table and choose Create. The source can be a table, a view or another summary.
- Choose the summary's title at the top of the grid, then Edit Summary definition, and set it up as below.
- Choose Save.
Until it is set up, a new summary shows one figure: how many rows its source has.
What the definition holds
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Source records | A filter on the source's rows, applied before anything is grouped or added up: this year's orders, won deals only. |
| Group rows by | The fields that make the rows: one row per region, or per region and channel. The order of the fields is the order of the levels. |
| Values to calculate | Choose Add value, a field and what to work out: Sum, Average, Count, Minimum or Maximum. Each shows as, for example, Sum of Amount. |
| Pivot by (optional) | A field whose values become columns: one column per channel, or per month. A second field nests under the first. |
| Default order | Shown once rows are grouped: the grouping fields the rows are sorted by. |
Columns by date
When you pivot by a date field, the pivot's settings show the field · By, with Year, Quarter, Month, Week or Day. Month is used unless you choose another. The columns are in date order and read like 2026, 2026 Q1, 2026-01, 2026-W05 or 2026-01-31.
The Total column
A pivot starts with a Total column: the value over all of the row's records, whichever column they fall in. Then come the columns, one per value of the pivot field.
Under the pivot, Max columns limits how many columns are made, and Keep says which: Top by value (the largest by the first value), Alphabetical or Most recent. Records whose column was not kept still count in Total.
Limits
Rows cannot be grouped by a part of a date: grouping rows by a date field makes one row per date as stored. To see months or quarters, pivot by the date instead.
On a table of a connected database, tick Enable Sort, Filter and Grouping on each field the summary groups, filters or pivots by. A connected table's fields start with it off, because each sort, filter and grouping runs on your database. A pivot on a field without it shows only its Total column.
Count counts rows: a summary has no count of different values. A summary is read-only; records are changed in their tables.
How to build a sales dashboard on the database you already have builds sales by region, pivoted by quarter, on a connected PostgreSQL database.
Last updated 29 October 2026