Calculating Paydays in a calendar year using Excel

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In India salary is usually paid on the last working day of a month – the payday. It is slightly different in countries where payrolls are processed every 2 weeks. For eg. in US most companies pay salary on every 2nd Friday / Thursday.

We can calculate the paydays / payroll periods in excel with simple date formulas:

Calculating last working day of a month – Payday for monthly payroll processing

payday-payroll-last-working-day-of-month-excel
Put in other words, last working day of a month is nothing but 1 working day before first day of next month. So last working day of Jan 2008 is one working day before first day of Feb 2008; 2/1/2008.

Here is how you can find out payday for all months in a given calendar year :

last-working-day-of-month-spreadsheet-formula1Assuming months are in column B, from B3 to B14, last working day of first month can be found by WORKDAY() formula: =WORKDAY(B4,-1). WORKDAY() excel formula calculates a future / past date by adding / subtracting any number of working days from it. Ex: =workday(today(),5) will return the date of 5th working day from today.

Calculating Payroll Dates for Biweekly Salaries – Typical US Payroll Calendar Dates

us-payroll-payday-calculation-26-pay-periods-excelCalculating US Payroll dates is slightly complicated. First we have to find the first Monday of the year. This begins the first pay-period of 26 pay-periods in America. Then, each payday is exactly 12 days after the starting Monday.

Here is how we can find the first Monday of any given year: =if(weekday("1/1/2008")=2,"1/1/2008","1/1/2008"+9-weekday("1/1/2008")), we are using weekday() function to find the day of week on 1/1/2008 and then add required number of days to it to get the First Monday of the year.

Once the first Monday is calculated, then finding the payday dates for each pay period is simple. First payment date is 12 days away from the Monday and subsequent pay dates are 14 days apart.

More on date / time: 10 tips on using, formatting date / time in excel.

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31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”

  1. Harry says:

    Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.

  2. Jomili says:

    On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?

    • Chandoo says:

      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.

      • Neeraj Agarwal says:

        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

  3. TheQ47 says:

    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.

    • Chandoo says:

      @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.

  4. Neeraj Agarwal says:

    I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12

    Regards
    Neeraj Kumar Agarwal

  5. mariann says:

    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!

    • Chandoo says:

      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.

  6. […] 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 […]

  7. Franciele says:

    You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work

  8. Ali says:

    Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?

    How would you go about it?

  9. NARUTO says:

    HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013

  10. Amol says:

    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.

  11. Ricardo says:

    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.

  12. MF says:

    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/

  13. Renuka says:

    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

  14. renuka says:

    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

    • Chandoo says:

      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.

  15. Justine says:

    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

  16. Arvind says:

    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?

  17. JEREMIAH KOOL says:

    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)

  18. Shawn says:

    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?

  19. Mihail says:

    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.

  20. Saidatta Pati says:

    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.

  21. Dan says:

    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

  22. sathik says:

    pls explain in detail step 7

  23. Arun says:

    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

  24. aye myat maw says:

    Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.

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