Date from multiple date columns

Question

I am using Tableau and I would like to combine two different date columns 1. purchase_date 2. revenue_date

My case is that there is a delay between purchase creation date and revenue creation date. We sell products and we take the revenue a few days later.

We would like to have a field that the amount dimension to be calculated using revenue date and the number of purchases dimension to be calculation using purchase date. So the desired result is the one displayed below (Expected Tableau result). Exptected tableau example

Answer 1

This task would be easier if you reshape your data (or revise your query) to have two tables. The first describing Orders_Placed with a Purchase Id and Date and Amount Columns

The second table describing Received_Payments with Payment_Id, Order_Id, Date and Amount columns.

If you model your data separately in this case, you can represent situations like - orders that have no payments yet, orders that have a series of partial payments, even overpayments. So there are benefits to not mixing two different types of objects in your data representation. And payments are still tied to orders by the shared Order_Id

Finally, to get the chart you want, you can make two separate connections in Tableau and then use data blending to build your chart. Linking on the date field. Use the Order data source as the primary data source.