We all have atleast one story of how that one time the boss / co-worker / classmate / cat ruined the carefully crafted excel spreadsheet by mucking up the formulas or disturbing the formatting. There are 3 very easy solutions to prevent this problem,
- Write an unleash_a_pack_of_wild_cats_when_someone_messes_with_the_file () macro: It is not an elegant solution, and cats are not very consistent, but it can work.
- Move to marketing department, you dont need to send excel files any more, just ppts. 😛
- Or, read this post and learn 10 awesome tips on how to boss proof your excel files.
So here is the list of 10 tips to make better excel spreadsheets. I suggest using all these tips for a perfect boss proof workbook.
Restrict The Work Area Few Columns and Rows
Not all spreadsheets have 256 columns and 65000 rows of data. So why show the entire grid when you can, say, just show the 44 rows and 23 columns in which the sales report is presented.
To restrict the work area,
- Select the first column you dont want to see (24th column) and press CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW. Now Right click and select “Hide” option.
- Select the first row you dont want to see (45th row) and press CTRL+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW. Now right click and select “Hide” option.
Lock Formula Cells And Protect The Worksheet
Formulas are the most vulnerable part of an excel sheet. You accidentally edit something, say in payroll sparesheet, and you just gave 3200% bonus to someone in the organization. That is alright if that someone is a CEO of a bailed-out bank, but in all other cases, you end up spending a sweet afternoon trying to figure out what went wrong.
So, it is better to lock the workbook formulas and protect the worksheet so that no one accidentally erase the formulas or mess with them. To do this follow the steps in the illustration above.
You can use the same trick to lock the charts and other worksheet objects.
Freeze Panes So that Your boss Knows what she is Reading
Freeze panes is a very useful feature. It locks the important items on the top so even when you scroll down you still see them. (You can do the same for columns, thus seeing the first few column even when scrolling left).
Bonus tip: Use excel tables (new feature in Excel 2007) so that you dont need to freeze panes. Learn more.
Hide Un-necessary / Calculation Sheets
It is fairly common for excel workbooks to have tens worksheets, some with data, some with calculations, some with intermediate stuff and only one or two sheets with actual outcome (like a dashboard or a report).
There is no reason to think that all these worksheets should be visible all the time to the boss. While it makes sense to have the data and calculations visible so that someone can audit the worksheet, I am sure you dont want your boss to waster her time doing that. So here is a handy tip:
- Select all the worksheets other than the output sheets and hide them.
Hide Rows / Columns
If for some reason, hiding worksheets is not possible, you can still try hiding rows and columns. This is a very good way to prevent someone from accidentally messing a with a row of “really big and complicated formulas”.
Just select the rows / columns you want to hide and right click and select the “hide” option.
Include Cell – Comments / Help Messages
We all know bosses have a busy mind. They dont have time to remember (or know) every little thing. Heck, sometimes they dont even know what somethings are.
I suggest using cell comments and help messages to give right information / guidelines to the spreadsheet end user, like “enter your age in this cell”. They are easy to implement and totally non-intrusive.
- To include a cell comment, select the cell and press SHIFT+F2 and write the comment.
To include a cell message, select the cell, go to data validation, go to “input message” tab and type what you want.
Data Validations, Error Messages
Spreadsheets are complicated things that are carefully crafted with umpteen pre-conditions and assumptions. I am sure there is at least one excel file out there that will only work if a cat enters the input. But we are not talking about cats, the point is, it is important that right data is fed to the worksheet before the formulas (or charts or payroll macro etc.) can work. That is where data validation can help.
It is very easy to set up data validation in excel. Just select the cell and go to data validation (in Data ribbon / menu). There are several ways in which you can set up data validations,
- You can show an incell drop down box and ask users to pick from a list
- You can specify the type of data allowed (dates, times, numbers, text)
- You can specify the length of data
- You can specify the conditions on data (like between 2 numbers, less than a given date etc.)
- You can even use formulas to make your own data validations [example]
There are several examples of using data validation in this site. Go check.
Use Consistent Colors And Schemes
Anything looks better when it is consistent, even when it is internally screwed up. That same rule applies to excel workbooks as well. It will make your boss feel comfortable and relaxed to see an excel workbook with consistent colors and (simple) schemes.
I suggest using excel cell styles to define the styles for your workbooks. This ensures consistency and you dont have to spend after hours formatting the worksheets. Read more about cell styles.
Name and Color Worksheet Tabs Appropriately
It doesnt matter if you have designed an awesome excel dashboard, your boss can be still pissed because the sheet name is “Sheet 69”. That brings us to the last and final point.
Use appropriate names (and may be tab colors) for the worksheet tabs. This makes the navigation easy and boss proof.
Learn how to color excel worksheet tabs.
Before Closing The Workbook, Select Cell A1 On The Correct Sheet
Just before you finally save the workbook and e-mail it to the boss, make sure you are on the right worksheet (ie the dashboard or the report) and selected cell A1. The ensures that when the boss opens the workbook, she sees the right tab with right information, not some calculations or formulas.
That is all, you have just learned a handful of trick to impress your boss.
Share your boss proofing tricks for excel
Got an awesome idea that has been working on your boss? Share it with us in comments. I love to hear your stories and how you are using excel to further your career.
Be awesome, Learn few more excel tricks:
We at PHD have a simple goal – “to make you awesome in excel and charting”. Here is a list of articles I recommend reading if you are new here or just wanted to be more.
- 15 fun and exciting excel tips – who say spreadsheets are boring?
- 15 Excel formulas beyond IF() and SUM()
- 15 Excel productivity tips that you dont know
- 10 things about Excel 2007 that you should know to work better
- More articles on excel productivity
Dilbert cartoon from Dilbert.com
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.