Zoho Projects Custom Reports: Build KPIs Without Excel Exports
Zoho Projects just gave us custom reports, which means you can finally stop exporting to Excel just to answer basic KPI questions.
Default reports are fine until you need your metrics: your filters, your columns, your rollups, your weekly review view. Then it is export city.
Zoho Projects now supports Project Level Custom Reports, which lets you create tailored visualizations using multiple data points, save them, and organize them into folders for easy access.
Watch How to Stop Using Excel for Project Reporting
What project level custom reports are
Custom Reports in Zoho Projects let you build reports for project data based on your own criteria. Zoho describes this as advanced module-level reporting across
Tasks, Issues, Time Logs, and Phases, where you can plot fields on axes, group data, and save reports for ongoing use.
This matters because the report lives inside the project, which is where the work and the accountability already are.
Availability note
Zoho notes that custom reports and report folders are available in the latest user-based Premium and Enterprise plans, while predefined reports are available across plans.
What you can customize
You are not just stuck with a fixed template. Zoho Projects supports report customization through:
- Filters to refine results
- Chart types for visualization
- Saved reports and folders for organization
- Zia insights for AI-driven summaries
And the KPI piece is the big win for weekly project reviews.
How to build a project level custom report
Here is the practical setup that mirrors what you described in your video.
Step 1: Navigate to Custom Reports
Go to your Project → Report → Custom Reports. Zoho documents this exact path in their configuration steps.
Step 2: Add a report and pick your module
Click Add Report, name it, then choose your Module and optionally a Folder to keep reports organized.
Choose what you are reporting on:
- Tasks
- Issues
- Time Logs
- Phases
Step 3: Apply filters that match how you manage
Use filters to narrow the data to what you actually review. In real life that looks like:
- Owner
- Status
- Priority
- Milestone or sprint
- Date ranges
Zoho supports customizing filter criteria as part of report configuration.
Step 4: Choose how to visualize it
Select a chart type, then choose fields to plot on the X and Y axes, and optionally group the data. Zoho’s report creation flow is built around choosing chart type and plotting fields.
Step 5: Save it so it is reusable
Once you save it, this becomes your repeatable KPI view for weekly reviews. Zoho also supports cloning, editing, moving reports between folders, and exporting to PDF when needed.
KPI Customizations: make the KPI cards readable
Zoho Projects includes KPI Customizations that let you format KPI style metrics using number patterns with units and decimal places. This is intended for large figures like revenue, targets, or adoption percentages.
How to create a KPI style report
Zoho’s documented flow for KPI reporting is:
- Create a new report or open an existing report
- Under Plot Options, remove the X-axis value
- Select a KPI in the Y-axis and click Apply
- Configure KPI Customizations like unit, alignment, and decimal places
- Apply and save
That is the difference between a report that looks like a chart experiment and a report that reads like an executive KPI card.
KPI examples to build first
If you want to make this immediately useful for a weekly project review, start with KPIs that answer “what is stuck” and “what is burning”:
- Overdue tasks count
- Tasks completed this week
- Open issues by priority
- Total logged hours for the period
Once those exist inside the project, your team does not need to go hunting for status. The project becomes the management cockpit, not just a task list.
Want help building custom reports that match real project ops?
If you want help building custom reports and KPI views that match how you run projects in real life, reach out to book a call at the link in bio.
We will help you decide what to measure, how to filter it, and how to structure reports so your team actually uses them every week.
