create dependent variable to capture the change over time effect

I'm trying to build a regression model with dependent variables and most of them are at year level. Ex:sales, requests raised, No. of products by year (2015-2018) as the journey of the customer effects the target variable how I can create variables to capture the changes happened year over year.

I am thinking, I will not directly use the year level variables because it will not capture the change over time and Thinking to use growth variables but are there any other methods to capture more information?

Thanks in advance