Keeping track of your expenses is one of the fundamentals of living good life. So I asked you to prepare a personal expense tracker as part of our 10,000 RSS Subscriber Milestone contest. I have received 7 excellent entries in this contest, each capable of making expense tracking a breeze while providing good analytics of the expense data to understand how you spend.
Thanks everyone for participating and making this a huge learning experience for you and I. Personally I have learned several useful formula and tracker related tricks from this.
How to vote?
Each of the 7 entries start with a title including authors name. Each entry includes a small image of the tracker along with few other thumbnails. Click on the images to see them in bigger versions. You can download the source workbooks and play with the trackers yourself.
Tell me which one you liked most by posting a comment with the option number. The winner (option getting maximum votes) will get Toshiba Mini 300 Series Netbook.
That is right. A Netbook. (find out more about the exact model and specs here
Please note that these files are copyrighted to original authors and you cannot use them for commercial purposes.
I have included 3 comments against each entry based on my understanding of the tracker. Please share your opinions and reviews using the comments section of this post.
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Bigtaff [Option 1]
My comments:
- Looks awesome
- Can handle multiple currencies
- Provides excellent analysis on various criteria (by month, monthly, annual, by person, by category etc.)
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Cnat [Option 2]
My comments:
- Very cool frequency analysis of expenses by date
- Good use of in-cell charts to compare income with expenses
- Simple, easy to use tracker
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Ibrahim [Option 3]
My comments:
- Separate sheets for each of the 12 months, good for yearly tracking
- Analytics by month or by expense category
- Simple Grid like structure for entering data
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Karthik [Option 4]
My comments:
- Tracks expenses for one month at a time
- Tracks various payment modes (cash, check, card) and payment due dates
- Nice summary of expenses by account, payment status, category and week
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Pedrowave [Option 5]
My comments:
- Simple tracker with easy input sheet
- Option to track by month or by day of month
- A simple chart shows income compared to expenses and savings
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Romeog [Option 6]
My comments:
- Looks awesome, the expense dashboard is quite versatile with ability to view expense data for any month, any number of days etc.
- Easy to compare categories and choose which categories to include in output
- Simple data entry sheet
Excel Personal Expense Tracker by Tessaes [Option 7]
My comments:
- Clean input sheets, easy to enter the data
- Summaries by category and daily, weekly and monthly statistics
- Simple charts to understand how actual expenses differed from budgets
Please vote for the option you liked most:
Use the comments and tell me which option you liked best. Go!
Thank you
I sincerely thank Bigtaff, Cnat, Ibrahim, Karthik, Pedrowave, Romeog and Tessaes for taking time to participate in this contest and make such beautiful and delightful trackers. Thank you so much for your generosity in sharing what you know.
25 Responses to “Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User Attention [Quick Tip]”
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which could also provide another piece of information.
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which can also provide another piece of information.
For Excel 2007, your formula should do the same as the Excel 2003 version, so that non-alert rows are blank - if they are 0, the unnecessary green icon will show
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !!! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
The Complete formula [Don't Know how it got cut ]
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
PS : Use in single line [I have split it to avoid cuts 😉 ]
Hi Chandoo..
why it is not displaying the complete formula..
anyways here is the balance
"=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153), IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155), IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))"
@Rohit... your formulas are fine. Just that the width of comment area is fixed and hence my website is cropping it at 640pixels. I just edited your formula and added few white spaces so that it wraps nicely.
Very good idea btw.. kudos!
Hi,
Maybe just go for 'bold' ; 'underline' or 'italic' to draw the users attention? Those methods (if those can be called methods) are used cross media type (books, journals, blogs, billboards, ...) to guide the readers eye to valuable information.
Just a basic thought
@Tom.. good idea..
[...] has a very nice writeup on how to add such alerts to dashboard sheets. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Divide your data set into workbooksHow to enforce [...]
Hi Chandoo,
You certainly grabbed my attention! although I wasn't sure what my brother (Suresh) and cousin (Shyam) were doing right, and I was doing wrong? 😉
I love your blog btw - Many thanks for all your hard work in unravelling the secrets and mysteries of Excel!
Best regards
Ramesh
I thought I saw an advertisment for a book about learning excel called excel himalaya or something. It cost about 35.00 us money but seemed to have the things I need to have my admin assistant to start to use. I was hoping to start with this book and then send her to school if she shows some interest and aptitude. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Great web site and information!!!!
@Jeff... checkout http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/08/25/excel-everest-review/
thanks, your website is awesome!
[...] Alerts to highlight focus areas [...]
[...] There are lots of numbers in this dashboard. I would suggest adding few more visualizations like showing indicators or applying conditional formatting or replacing a table with a chart. This would reduce the [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo
Firstly thanks for all the cool tips on how to use Excel better.
I am new to the site and have a question which you may be able to assist with but dont know if these comment boxes are the best way of asking ?
I am looking at assets and trying to calculate the depreciation total by taking a year (say 2010) adding the expected life of the asset (say 10 years) then comparing that to a future date (say 2015) using an IF statement. The calculation in normal is - IF((year in col B (2010) plus 10years)>year 2015, add a years depreciation, otherwise leave blank). The converted date value does not appear able to add 10 years in order to compare it to 2015. Am I missing something ?
I use the “IF” Statement in conjunction with Conditional Formatting in MS Excel to give verbiage to alert one of a required action, dependant on a review date. This makes a visual stimulus, plus it clues one as to what the conditional format is trying to warn you about and what follow-up actions are required.
Wow, I'm really impressed with dashboards. I had no idea this stuff was even possible with excel. I'd like to offer an interactive dashboard to my customers, showing analytics of their data. I have a .pdf file with the datapoints. I'd like them to enter the data on my website, and be able to see their data. Is something like that possible.
Hi Chandoo,
I've recently purchased the package for both templates.
In the portfolio dashboard,under the calculations worksheet, I'm attempting to change the date range in the gantt chart to show only the range of the project that starts in late 2013. How do I do this?
Thanks
Adam
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo,
I'm new at Excel Dashboard and found your blog really useful and helpful! It's very nice of you that you dedicate your time to do this.
Could you please explain how can I use Alerts based on dates on a Dashboar?
For example, if a target date is coming closer to the actual date, the alert is yellow or red.
I'd really appreciate some help!
Thank you
Where can I download the file Excel of Averall Statistics ???
Thanks a lot.