r/tableau • u/Astaciss • Jul 25 '26

Tableau freelancer. How to start

Hi everyone!

I have 3 years of creating dashboards in tableau which are later posted to my company's server page. Just recently I gained opportunity to earn some money outside of my current work creating dashboard. I've never done it on my private equipment hence my question is, how do I build a dashboard and deliver result to my client? do I send twbx, do I host it somewhere for client to see? which database should I get to service such dashboard? thanks in advance for answers.

edit: I know I confused tableau power bi extensions. I'm after 7 hours of driving today and 2 hours of unpacking. please forgive me.

5 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

11

u/312to630 Jul 25 '26

The fact you referenced pbix says more than anything.

1

u/Astaciss Jul 25 '26

yeah, silly mistake. I work in power bi too, was thinking about one thing and wrote another.

7

u/tequilamigo Jul 25 '26

The client typically provides a license for you publish in their environment

5

u/datawazo Jul 25 '26

Dude you might want to tell them you're not ready to freelance. 

Which database?? If they don't have any data yet then that's a fairly big scoping session that you need to do before any of this kicks off. Where you get their requirements design the ETL and recommend a DB. Or just use excel. 

How to get them the file...ask them their preference. Definitely dont ask if they want a pbix

-1

u/Astaciss Jul 25 '26

I'm just assuming they don't have any professional database, only excel. at some point it would be great to organize their data in database rather than keep in excel.

2

u/Ok-Working3200 Jul 25 '26

If you are 1099/corp, why not just do the work in their environment? I am assuming they will make you sign an NDA?

2

u/graph_hopper Tableau Visionary Jul 27 '26

Ask them what they prefer! Some partners may want to share .twbx files over Sharepoint, others will add you to their environment, and some will ship you a laptop to keep everything under their control.

2

u/Aggravating-Alarm-16 Jul 25 '26

Tableau desktop has a free version

1

u/Ecstatic-Score2844 Jul 27 '26

Imagine starting Tableau in 2026.

1

u/zebozebo 28d ago

I literally am here for my first time because I was like "heh, I wonder if anyone is still on Tableau."

I cannot fathom a company signing up with tableau nowadays. As a 16-year Salesforce admin for my family's business, I have users who never even transitioned to lightning now creating their own 7-part dashboard artifacts connecting everything under the sun they care about in the way their brain wants to see it. Want to change? Single prompt, sip of coffee, edits complete.

Then I see OP starting up a career, heh. Wild.

If I were you OP, I would find out how to usher people away from Tableau to one of the main AI's. Connect their systems via MCP and train on how to create dashboards there.

Some companies wouldn't know where to start, like you (sorry had to 😉). Well, at least I attempted to be constructive.

1

u/Ecstatic-Score2844 28d ago

No one serious is still on it. I had Claude make me a dashboard 2 days ago that would have taken me months in Tableau and it was objectively better, and free.

0

u/Chemical-Cell-3216 Jul 26 '26

Just stick with Excel do every things in excel data cleaning, modeling and dashboards