How to Look up Based on Multiple Conditions

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This article is part of our VLOOKUP Week. Read more.

Situation

Not always we want to lookup values based on one search parameter. For eg. Imagine you have data like below and you want to find how much sales Joseph made in January 2007 in North region for product “Fast car”?

Data:

Data for this Example -Looing up Based on More than One Value

Solution

Simple, use your index finger to scan the list and find the match 😉

Of course, that wouldn’t be scalable. Plus, you may want to put your index finger to better use, like typing . So, lets come up with some formulas that do this for us.

You can extract items from a table that match multiple criteria in multiple ways. See the examples to understand the techniques:

Using SUMIFS Formula [help]
Formula =SUMIFS(lstSales, lstSalesman,valSalesman, lstMonths,valMonth, lstRegion,valRegion, lstProduct,valProduct)
Result 1592
Using SUMPRODUCT Formula [help]
Formula =SUMPRODUCT(lstSales,(lstSalesman=valSalesman)*(lstMonths=valMonth)*(lstRegion=valRegion)* (lstProduct=valProduct))
Result 1592
Using INDEX & Match Formulas (Array Formula) [help]
Formula {=INDEX(lstSales,MATCH(valSalesman&valMonth&valRegion&valProduct, lstSalesman&lstMonths&lstRegion&lstProduct,0))}
Result 1592
Using VLOOKUP Formula [help]
Formula =VLOOKUP(valMonth&valSalesman&valRegion&valProduct,tblData2,7,FALSE)
Result 1592
Conditions: A helper column that concatenates month, salesman, region & product in the left most column of tblData2
Using SUM (Array Formula) [help]
Formula {=SUM(lstSales*(lstSalesman=valSalesman)*(lstMonths=valMonth)* (lstRegion=valRegion)*(lstProduct=valProduct))}
Result 1592

Sample File

Download Example File – Looking up Based on More than One Value

Go ahead and download the file. It also has some homework for you to practice these formula tricks.

Also checkout the examples Vinod has prepared.

Special Thanks to

Rohit1409, dan l, John, Godzilla, Vinod

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17 Responses to “Budget vs. Actual Profit Loss Report using Pivot Tables”

  1. Dau says:

    Good Work, Yogesh & Chandoo! Thanks.

  2. Abdul Kader says:

    Hi everybody,
    first sorry I am late to say something about this topic;actually I was waiting last part
    second I am not accountant I am an Engineer
    third """"Very Important""" the idea is not about Loss but I am sure it is profit
    Based on third it shows:
    1- How to use EXCEL
    2- How to use pivot TABLES
    3- How to collect and arrange DATA
    4- How to make reports

    Many Thanks

  3. UB says:

    Hi Yogesh and Chandoo,

    Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
    You guys are great!

  4. Alejandro says:

    thanks chandoo and yogesh, thanks for you lessons, are great!....i have a idea for a budget. I try to do it..... thanks for all

  5. SAUL ESPINOZA says:

    Thanks a lot for sharing the most powerful tool worldwide "knowledge"
    Warm greetings from Peru

  6. juanito says:

    Hi -
    This is a really great article because it's a simple and common thing you'd want to do with a pivot table but not at all obvious how to do it! So - muchas gracias to Chandoo and Yogesh!
    One thing - I couldn't get past the group error in the sample file. I would click on ungroup but it didn't seem to have any effect. I'd appreciate it if anybody has any pointers here.

    -Juanito

  7. Adam says:

    Hi Chandoo

    I am also having the group error. Can't seem to ungroup? Appreciate if you explain further on the steps required in order to get to calculated items.

    Many thanks and keep up the great work.

    Cheers
    Adam

  8. Catherine says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I'm struggling resolving the problem depicted below:
    I have a set of data, with (among others) a "Region" field (can be APJ, EMEA, or AMS), and a "Country" field.
    Unfortunately, I need to group data by the following 4 Regions: APeJ, Japan, EMEA and AMS.

    I first tried to make a pivot with Region and Country in the rows (or columns), and then group Country data as per the above.
    Alas, as soon as I have a new Country that appear in my data set, my groupings are broken, and I have to redo the job of ungrouping, grouping etc.

    I thought I could try to use calculated item, by adding first a new column to my dataset concatenating Region_Country, and create an "APeJ" calculated item that would sum all the "APJ_*" and substract the "APJ_Japan", but again, no clue, as I can't find a way to use any wild card in those formulas.

    Given that I already found extremely helpful tips and tricks in your site that helped me manage that bunch of data, I'm pretty sure you'll have a bright idea on how I can solve that one!

    Thanks in advance for your lights!

    • Chandoo says:

      Hi Catherine...

      In such cases, I advice using an additional column in the data itself. You can set-up a grouping table else where with country in first column, region in second column. And then in the data, you can add an extra column and use VLOOKUP to fetch the region based on the country.

      Then feed this entire data (with extra column) to pivot table and use the extra column to group the data.

      • Catherine says:

        Hi Chandoo,

        Thank you for your prompt answer.
        I finally came to the same conclusion - after a rest 🙂 . I was probably too tired Friday evening (it was rather late), having spent hours in manipulating all my surveys data so as to pull rolling averages, make nice graphs and so on, and was trying to find a complex solution when there was a simple one.

        Thanks again,
        Catherine

  9. Tzu says:

    Hey,

    Great post!

    I for example have different database structure with the following fields :

    Date, Expense, Income, Sum (Income - Expense), Category (Sales, Cost of Goods and etc).

    Creating a P&L report for the whole year works great. Including gross margin % and etc.

    Though, creating P&L report by QTR/Month is becoming impossible since i get the following error : “This PivotTable report field is grouped. You cannot add calculated item to grouped filed.”

    Is there a solution for this kind of problem?
     

  10. klumsyboy says:

    Like Adam and Juanito, I also cannot ungroup.

    Would appreciate it if you can add a few more lines and a screenshot or two on where to put the mouse cursor to ungroup. 

  11. klumsyboy says:

    Hi,  I have figured out the ungrouping problem. One of the earlier steps was to group by month, if you pull the month back down to the column then right click and then select ungroup, then pull the month back up so you end up with just data source and budget/actual as the headings, then you can continue on.

  12. Kent Lau says:

    To solve the ungroup problem, my method is:
    Copy the "data" sheet to a whole new Excel workbook
    and directly work on Part 6.

    And since it is a fresh copy, Excel don't show me the "can't ungroup" problem. Hope this help.

    Thank you Yogesh for this wonderful tutorial.

    Kent, Malaysia

  13. felipe says:

    Just when i thought pivots were awesome i learn about inserting the calculated fields and that makes them more awesome. chandoo where have you been all my life.

  14. barrierone says:

    Hello - your P&L pivot version has really impressed my boss and would like to use it. I have applied it for a actual vs budget vs forecast model I have created. One problem. In your variance above the operating profit percent % variance shows 33.8% but I want it to show (0.01) point or the true diff from prior budget.

    I know I can add calculation to the side but boss would like to see it in pivot table.

    Please help
    Thanks

  15. barrierone says:

    I have a further query which may solve my above dilemma. Is it possible to add a column that calculates percent increase. So in the example above a new column would be added to show variance %.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks