This is a Guest Post by Robert on Visualization Techniques for Excel KPI Dashboards.
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
In this final post we will learn how to add a box plot to show the distribution of values
The solution
The most common way in descriptive statistics to visualize the distribution of sets of numerical data is a box plot. But according to my experience in day to day business, most business people are not familiar with this type of visualization.
Therefore we try to create a simpler chart which is hopefully easier to understand:
The light grey bar visualizes the range of all values, the dark grey bar the range of the 10 items displayed on the management dashboard table. The cross shows the total average and – similar to the bullet graphs – the vertical line represents the target. This is less information than a real box whisker plot would provide, but I guess it will be easier to understand.
The implementation
Download the Excel KPI dashboard final workbook and read on how to create a simplified box plot.
- Let’s bring our ducks in a row first. Calculate all necessary data to be shown in the box plots: the minimum and maximum of the total data and of the 10 displayed items on the dashboard, the average and the target. The formulas are quite simple. You can find them in the downloaded workbook in
calculation!AZ23:BE27. - The basis of our visualization is a stacked bar chart with only one category and 4 data series:
- the invisible bar (the bar between 0 and the total minimum),
- the left light grey bar (the bar between the total minimum and the minimum of the displayed 10 items),
- the dark grey bar (the bar between the minimum and maximum of the 10 displayed values) and
- the right light grey bar (the bar between the maximum of the 10 displayed items and the total maximum).
Again the formulas to calculate these values are quite simple (see calculation!BF23:BI27).
- Create a stacked bar chart and format the bars accordingly (no fill color and no border for the invisible bar, light and dark grey fill colors for the other bars).
- Add the average and the target values as additional series to the chart and change the chart type of these new series to XY scatter charts (X is the average / target value, Y is a dummy 1). Format the average as a cross (or whatever you choose) and use the error bars to format the target as a vertical line. The method of creating a combination chart of bars and XY scatters is pretty much the same we used in the 4th post of the KPI dashboard series (here).
- Remove or hide all unnecessary chart elements: no fill color and no border for plot or chart area; no line, tick marks etc. for the vertical axes, etc.
- Repeat steps 3 to 5 to create charts for all 5 KPI.
- Bring the charts to the dashboard, position them and add a caption to explain the chart elements.
That’s it. Play around with the new feature: change the sort criteria or sort order or scroll up and down the dashboard table and see how the new charts are changing.
Final Remark
This is a simplified version of box plot visualization and works only for data sets with positive values. Of course there is also a more sophisticated way of creating charts like this for any data (positive and negative values, i.e. bars crossing the vertical axis). This is a bit more complicated since you need 8 data series for the bar chart instead of 4 but the principle is exactly the same.
Our final KPI dashboard looks like this (click on it for a larger version):
What’s next?
With this last part I guess the time may have come to end the series about Excel Management KPI Dashboards here and to hand over the further development of this dashboard to the readers of Chandoo.org.
I do hope the series of 6 posts have been useful for your daily work and provided new ideas. Make sure you have downloaded the Excel KPI dashboard tutorial workbook
Thanks for all your comments and appreciations.
Last but not least: Chandoo, my friend, once more thank you so much for hosting my ideas at Chandoo.org.
Kind regards from Munich
Robert
Chandoo’s note
If not for Robert’s mail in August suggesting these wonderful ideas as posts in PHD, I would never have learned these things or shared them with you all. I am thankful to him for that.
Well, I am constantly trying to learn new dashboard techniques and I will try to share the worthy ones with you all. Meanwhile if you have a good idea for excel dashboards (or charts, techniques etc.) and would like to share with everyone, feel free to drop a comment or write to me. I will be *happy* to feature your ideas.
Further Reading on Dashboards using Excel
Checkout our exclusive section: Excel Dashboards for more tutorials, tips, design principles.
You can also consider joining my Excel School program to learn how to make world-class dashboards.
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.