This is 4th part of Creating Management Dashboards in Microsoft Excel 6 post series by Robert.
This 6 Part Tutorial on Management Dashboards Teaches YOU:
Creating a Scrollable List View in Dashboard
Add Ability to Sort on Any KPI to the Dashboard
Highlight KPIs Based on Percentile
Add Microcharts to KPI Dashboards
Compare 2 KPIs in the Dashboards Using Form Controls
Show the Distribution of a KPI using Box Plots
The Challenge – Adding Visualization to the KPI Dashboard
In this final post on KPI dashboards with Microsoft Excel, we will show you how to add meaningful graphical visualization directly into our dashboard table. With scrolling, sorting and highlighting the dash-board already offers some interesting analytical features (see previous posts). But it is still displaying the data as pure numbers. That makes it difficult for the user to recognize the relative sizes of the values at a glance. Furthermore it is often necessary to communicate the relative position of the data compared to one or several other calculated or given values like the total average or a target.
The solution
[click here to view larger size]
Inserting conditionally formatted bar-line-combination-charts directly into the dashboard table visualizes the shown data and enables the user to get an overview at a glance. The bars show the relative sizes of the corresponding values, the conditional formatting let us immediately identify which values are below target (red color) or larger than target (grey color) and the line makes it easy to see whether a value is above or below the total average.
Download the Excel file – KPI Dashboards with visualization
The Implementation
To implement the charts, we need some knowledge about creating and formatting special charts with Microsoft Excel. In my humble opinion, the by far best resource on charts with Microsoft Excel is Jon Peltier’s excel charts pages. All you have to know for our dashboard charts is brilliantly described on Jon’s website (follow the links below).
- Prepare the workbook for the new features (5 extra columns on the dashboard for the bar charts, additional rows on the data worksheet to define the targets and new columns on the calculation sheet).
- Insert 5 conditional formatted bar charts. Read Jon’s method to create a conditional formatted chart.
Use the table on the dashboard as the data source for the chart and use the targets defined on the sheet “data” as the threshold whether a value is formatted red (below target) or grey (larger than or equal target).
- Calculate the total average on the calculation sheet for each KPI and add an average line to each of the bar charts by using an XY-scatter chart type. Read more on Bar line combo.The necessary calculations for the steps 2 and 3 can be found in columns Q to AQ of the sheet “calculation”.
- Format the charts to make only the bars and the average line visible (no axes, no grid lines, no data labels, no caption, no border or fill color of chart area and plot area). Like Albert Einstein said: “as simple as possible, but not any simpler.“
- Adjust the charts on the dashboard to make them fit exactly to the corresponding cell ranges. One tip for this: Holding the ALT key pressed when resizing a chart will make the chart size auto-fit to the size of the cell range beneath it. That makes it easier to position the charts correctly.The bar charts already look exactly the way we want them to. But there is one undesirable effect: when scrolling up or down the table, the maximum scale of the horizontal axis changes and the bars seem to “jump” up or down.
To avoid this, add two additional XY-scatter-series to the chart, representing the minimum and the maximum of the total data and assign them to the secondary axis. Furthermore add 2 additional bar series to the chart, again representing the minimum and the maximum of the total data and assign them to the primary axis. We thereby “force” both horizontal axes to be identical and stay the same when scrolling up or down. Since we do not want to display these dummy-series, format them with no line and invisible markers (XY-scatters) respectively with no fill color and no border.
- Finally update the caption beneath the table to explain the meaning of the line and the bar colors.
What is next?
- Download the excel KPI dashboard final workbook
- Bookmark Dashboards using Excel pages for future reference.
- Drop a lovely note of thanks to Robert if you have benefited from this series.
Read the next part: Part 5: Compare 2 Decision Parameters in the Dashboards Using Form Controls
Also, Checkout our Excel Dashboards Page for more examples and resources.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.