# Why you and your rep see different numbers in the same Pipedrive Insights report

https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-insights-different-numbers/
Published: 2026-10-03 · Updated: 2026-10-25

Insights visibility in Pipedrive follows the person looking, so the numbers in a report depend on who opens it. A user whose deals are set to “owner only” visibility sees Insights data for their own deals only. A user with either of the two Insights permissions switched off (“See company’s stats in Insights” and “See other users’ stats in Insights”) also sees only their own data. A deals admin sees every deal regardless of visibility group. So when a manager and a rep open the same report and get different totals, neither screen is broken. They are looking through two different access settings. Before anyone argues about the figure, settle who has which access, and agree whose screen the review runs on.

Averages of custom fields add their own traps; see [when a custom field average lies](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-insights-custom-field-averages/).

## Two screens, two pipeline totals

A made-up scene, but one most managers will recognise. Thursday, 2 pm, a one-on-one. The manager has the pipeline dashboard open on a laptop; the rep has what looks like the same dashboard on a second monitor. The manager says there are 58 open deals in the pipeline. The rep says 41. Both scroll, both squint, and the first ten minutes go to a numbers argument instead of the two deals the manager actually wanted to talk about.

That argument is not about teh pipeline. It is about access. The rep’s report is filtered, invisibly, by what the rep is allowed to see, and the manager’s is not. Pipedrive’s Help page on Insights says it plainly: there are no separate visibility groups for Insights, because the visibility you set for an item applies to Insights as well ( [Pipedrive Help: Insights visibility and permissions](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-visibility-permissions)). Two people, two visibility settings, two totals. Nobody has to be wrong.

Note that [sharing a dashboard does not share the data](https://salesbond.app/blog/share-pipedrive-insights-dashboard/): a viewer still sees what their own visibility allows.

If your problem is which numbers belong on the screen, or a field that has gone stale, start with [six numbers for a sales manager dashboard](https://salesbond.app/blog/sales-manager-dashboard-six-numbers/) or [five Pipedrive reports for pipeline health](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-reports-pipeline-health/); this piece is about clean data seen through different access.

## Where the gap comes from: Insights visibility, pipeline access, and two permissions

Four settings decide whether a given deal shows up for a given user: the user’s visibility group, the visibility of the pipeline, the “Visible to” setting on the deal itself, and the user’s permission set ( [Pipedrive Help: why can’t I see a deal](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/why-can-t-i-see-my-colleagues-deals-in-the-pipeline-view)). Insights sits downstream of all four. Visibility rules apply across items, reports and dashboards, so a deal the rep cannot open in the pipeline view does not count in the rep’s Insights either ( [Pipedrive Help: visibility and permissions overview](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/visibility-and-permissions-overview)).

Item visibility is the one that bites most often. With “owner only” (Pipedrive calls the option “Item owner”), a rep sees Insights data for the deals they own. The charts and collective figures still render; the specific items they don’t own are what is missing ( [Insights visibility and permissions](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-visibility-permissions)). That is exactly why the two dashboards in the scene look identical and disagree on the total. Same chart, different set of deals underneath. Activities have a stricter version of the same gap: [hidden activities](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-hidden-activities/) stay out of sight for anyone who cannot see every linked item.

Pipeline access is quieter. Pipelines are visible by default, but a hidden pipeline and every deal in it disappear for restricted users ( [visibility and permissions overview](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/visibility-and-permissions-overview)). Keep a renewals or partner pipeline hidden from new reps, and their “all open deals” report is short by exactly that pipeline. They will not know it. Pipedrive does mention a workaround for a single deal, moving it into a pipeline the person can access, and warns in the same breath that this may affect reporting in Insights ( [why can’t I see a deal](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/why-can-t-i-see-my-colleagues-deals-in-the-pipeline-view)). For a reporting mismatch it is the wrong fix. For a new hire, check this on day one: [the access checks to run from the new rep’s seat](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-new-rep-access-permission-sets/).

Then there are the two Insights permissions. They live under Manage users > Permission sets > Global features permission sets, in the “Visibility” section ( [Insights visibility and permissions](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-visibility-permissions)). “See company’s stats in Insights” requires “See other users’ data” to be enabled. “See other users’ stats in Insights” requires both of those.

With both switched on, the normal visibility rules decide what a user sees in reports. With one or both switched off, the user sees only their own data in Insights, whatever their visibility group says. So a rep whose group defaults to All users can still get a self-only dashboard if someone trimmed their permission set a year ago and nobody remembers.

Picture it as three gates in a row: a deal has to pass all of them to appear in a rep’s Insights.

![Diagram of three gates a deal must pass to reach a rep's Insights: visibility, pipeline access, two permissions](https://salesbond.app/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/pipedrive-insights-different-numbers-2.png)

## The admin exception

The manager in our scene is a deals admin, and that is why their total is bigger. Users with deals admin access have full visibility of all deals and leads regardless of the visibility group setting, and global admins see all person, organization and product data regardless of the visibility group option ( [Insights visibility and permissions](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-visibility-permissions)). Deal admins also always have access to all pipelines and deals, so the hidden-pipeline gate does not apply to them either ( [visibility and permissions overview](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/visibility-and-permissions-overview)).

In practice the admin’s dashboard is the only complete one in the company. Everyone else’s is a view. Most managers already know they can see everything, what they forget is that the report they built, shared, and asked a rep to “pull up before our call” renders against the rep’s access, not theirs. Pipedrive spells this out for shared dashboards: users “will only be able to see the information on the report or dashboard that they are allowed to see, based on their permission settings” ( [Pipedrive blog: sharable dashboards and reports](https://www.pipedrive.com/en/blog/sharable-dashboards-reports)). Sharing hands over the layout. Your access stays with you.

One more case from the “why can’t I see a deal” page: followers can see a deal even if it is otherwise restricted from them. A rep who follows a colleague’s deal will see it in Insights where another rep in the same group will not. Two reps in one visibility group can get two different totals, too.

## Three questions before the review, and who owns the number

Here is the check we run before any review where two people are going to look at a report. It takes a couple of minutes and it kills the argument before it starts.

1. **Who is looking?** Is the person an admin (deals admin or global admin), or a regular user? If one of you is an admin and the other is not, the totals will not match on any report that covers more than the rep’s own deals, and that is expected.
2. **Under which permission set?** Open Manage users > Permission sets for the rep’s set and look at the two Insights toggles in the “Visibility” section. Either one off means the rep’s dashboard is self-only.
3. **Under which visibility?** Which visibility group is the rep in, which option is the default for deals in it (Item owner or All users on the lower plans), and are all the pipelines in the report visible to that group?

When the answers differ between the two people, the report is not comparable and nobody should try to reconcile it line by line. Pick the screen instead. If you only need one group on the screen, you can [filter Insights by team](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-teams-team-filters/), but that narrows the report, not what anyone can see. Check this before you compare any [call-timing report in Insights](https://salesbond.app/blog/best-days-to-call-pipedrive/) between a rep and a manager.

Our rule: the number on the review is the one on the screen with the fullest access. In most small teams that is the manager’s, because the manager is the deals admin. The rep’s dashboard is for the rep’s own work, and its a perfectly good one for that. But once the conversation turns to the team pipeline, or to a deal the rep shares with someone else, the self-only view is the wrong instrument. Arguing with a rep about a number they cannot see isn’t fair to them.

Say it out loud at the start of the one-on-one. “We’re using my screen for pipeline totals, yours for your own deals.” That one sentence takes the edge off, because the rep stops hearing “your number is wrong” and starts hearing “your number is smaller because you can’t see Dana’s deals.”

If the mismatch is a surprise, do the quick test Help suggests: ask the deal’s owner to send you the deal link. If opening it gives you an error, the deal is restricted from you, and that is the whole explanation ( [why can’t I see a deal](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/why-can-t-i-see-my-colleagues-deals-in-the-pipeline-view)). You can fix access later. You do not have to fix it in the meeting.

A disclosure, since we are on the subject of two people and one set of numbers. We build SalesBond, a sales management layer on top of the CRM a team already uses; we started with Pipedrive. Its Sales Dashboard gives the head of sales the operational picture: exceptions, actions, per-rep execution. If the access mismatch above is a weekly event for you, [check your CRM with SalesBond](https://salesbond.app/).

## What your plan lets you change

Not every team can tune this, and the plan decides how far you can go ( [Pipedrive Help: visibility and permissions overview](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/visibility-and-permissions-overview)).

| Plan | Custom permission sets | Visibility groups | Deal visibility options |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lite, Growth | none | one default group | Item owner, All users |
| Premium | two | multiple groups and sub-groups | Item owner, Item owner’s group, Item owner’s group and sub-groups, All users |
| Ultimate | unlimited | multiple groups and sub-groups | same as Premium |

For the scene above, on Lite or Growth the decision is binary: either reps see every deal in the company (All users) or only their own plus whatever they follow (Item owner). You cannot carve out “my team’s deals but not the other team’s”. If you want the rep’s dashboard to match the manager’s for pipeline totals, the default has to be All users, and the cost is that reps see each other’s deals. Many small teams are fine with that.

On Premium and Ultimate you can do the middle thing: put the team in one visibility group, set deal visibility to “Item owner’s visibility group”, and the rep’s Insights will cover the team’s deals without exposing other groups. Pair that with a permission set that has both Insights permissions on, or the group setting does nothing for the dashboard.

Item-level overrides exist on every plan. Each deal has a “Visible to” field you can edit in the detail view, or in bulk from the list view by adding the “Visible to” column, selecting deals and applying one update ( [visibility and permissions overview](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/visibility-and-permissions-overview)). That is the tool for the one confidential deal in an otherwise open pipeline. It is not the tool for aligning two dashboards; use the group default for that, and decide who in the team is allowed to change either ( [who owns CRM data in a small team](https://salesbond.app/blog/crm-data-ownership-small-sales-team/)).

## If you hand reps a role-based template, tell them what it covers

In September 2026 Pipedrive shipped role-based dashboard templates for Insights, with ready-made sets for reps and for managers ( [Pipedrive product updates](https://www.pipedrive.com/en/product-updates)). We like the idea. A rep who has never built a report gets a sensible starting screen instead of a blank one.

What the note describes is content: pre-built templates tailored for reps and managers, covering pipeline health, win/loss rates, overdue activities and open deals. It says nothing about access. And dashboards show each viewer only what their permissions allow ( [sharable dashboards and reports](https://www.pipedrive.com/en/blog/sharable-dashboards-reports)). A rep on an Item owner default who opens the manager template therefore gets the manager’s charts filled with their own deals.

So when you roll one out say two sentences with it. First, what the rep will see: their own deals. The deals they follow, and everyone’s where the group defaults to All users, show up only if both Insights permissions are on in their set. Second, what they will not see, and that the gap is a setting, not a data problem. If you later decide the team should see more, that change lives in Manage users, not in the template.

The rep in our scene had the right number for the rep’s world; the manager had the right number for the company’s. Before your next one-on-one, decide whose world you are reviewing and say it in the first minute.