Pivot Table V2: Incorrect subtotals for non-additive metrics (%)

[pmilsomadaxa]

### Superset Version: 6.0.0

I'm using Pivot Table V2 with:
Rows:

• revgroupno
• revcategory

Metrics:

• Revenue
• Margin
• Margin %

Margin % is defined as a Custom SQL metric:
(SUM(revenue_amt) - SUM(calc_cogs_amt))/NULLIF(SUM(revenue_amt),0)* 100

Observations:

1. Row subtotals are working correctly once the values are configured as Metrics rather than Columns.
2. Revenue and Margin subtotals are correct.
3. Margin % detail rows are correct.
4. Margin % subtotal rows appear to be summing the displayed percentages rather than recalculating from the aggregated Revenue and Margin values.

Example:

47.52%
46.01%
Subtotal = 93.53%

where I would expect:

(870k + 1.1M) / (1.83M + 2.39M)
≈ 46.7%

I found:

• Issue Pivot Table show columns total question #23560
• Issue TOTALS incorrect for non-additive metric in pivot table #25747
• PR fix(pivot-table): Correct totals for non-additive metrics #34592 ("Correct totals for non-additive metrics")

Question:
Is correct subtotaling of non-additive metrics (ratios/percentages) expected to work in Superset 6.0.0?
If so, is there a configuration option or feature flag required?
If not, which release contains the fix for non-additive metric totals/subtotals?

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @pmilsomadaxa! I'm Dosu and I'm helping the Apache Superset team.

No, correct subtotaling of non-additive metrics (ratios/percentages) does not work in Superset 6.0.0 — this is an unresolved architectural limitation that persists across all current versions.

Root cause: Superset's backend post-processing receives pre-aggregated SQL results (your Margin % is already calculated per row) and then treats all numeric columns as additive when computing subtotals. It sums the displayed percentages rather than recalculating SUM(revenue_amt - calc_cogs_amt) / NULLIF(SUM(revenue_amt), 0) at the subtotal grouping level [1].

Status of the references you found:

• PR fix(pivot-table): Correct totals for non-additive metrics #34592 proposes a multi-query architecture (separate SQL queries per aggregation level) to fix this, but it has been open and unmerged for ~9 months [2]
• Issue TOTALS incorrect for non-additive metric in pivot table #25747 remains open — it's the target issue for PR fix(pivot-table): Correct totals for non-additive metrics #34592
• There is no feature flag or configuration option that enables correct non-additive subtotals [1]

There is no release containing a fix for this. The issue is tracked across multiple open tickets (#25747, #32260, #38674, #36165) and a maintainer has noted it's "not a pressing issue for committers from the Preset team, but we're happy to review solutions" [3].

Workarounds:

1. Avoid enabling subtotals/totals for non-additive metrics in the pivot table
2. Consider splitting your dashboard so that the ratio metric is displayed separately without subtotals, while additive metrics (Revenue, Margin) use subtotals normally

There are also broader proposals in flight — SIP-179 for per-metric aggregation customization and SIP-205 for an AntV S2-based pivot table — but neither has shipped yet.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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