This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.
- What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel
- Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
- Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros
- Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel
- My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros
In part 4 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to create our very first VBA application using what we learned so far.
Our first Application – What is it supposed to do anyway?
Remember the “We Are Nuts” example. We are back to it. This time, we will create a daily sales tracker application that makes your job a breeze. But saying words like breeze when defining your next VBA application is a dangerous thing. So lets list down all the things our little Excel VBA workbook should do.
- The current method of using Inputboxes to capture 24 sale values and any reasons for deviation is tedious. So our application should instead process the values from already entered values and ask for reasons (thru inputbox) only when the sales are too low or too high.
- At the end of processing the sales, we want to see a short summary of how we did for the day. Something like this,
- Once we finish viewing the statistics a snapshot of the daily sales & along with summary statistics should be saved to current folder as PDF for later reference.
Designing our first VBA Application – Key Ingredients:
In this section, let us understand how our application should be designed and what goes in to it.
First, let us look at various things our application need to do, in a schematic. This types of diagrams are called as flow charts.
Key Ingredients of our Daily Sales Tracker Application:
Lets look at each area of our application and understand what VBA technique or statement helps us to do it.
- Process one store sale at a time: This is achieved with the FOR EACH statement [Related: What are VBA loops?]
- Capture reasons for deviation: Lets do InputBox() for this
- Calculate Summaries as we go: Some variables to calculate the summaries as we go. And a few IIF() formulas to help us update the values where needed. (PS: IIF is Inline IF Formula)
- Display Summary Statistics: We will use MessageBox() for this.
- Save a snapshot of the report: This is done by Range.ExportAsFixedFormat() method. [Related: understanding cells, ranges & other VBA objects]
Demo of our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Application
Here is a quick demo of our Daily Sales Tracker Application
Download our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook:
Click here to download the Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook. Enable macros, enter some values and play with it.
If you just want to examine code, see this page.
What Next – My top 10 tips for using VBA
In final part of our VBA crash course, Learn my top 10 tips for mastering VBA.
If you have not read, please read the first 3 parts of this series,
- Introduction to Excel VBA – What is it & How to write your first VBA Macro.
- Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
- What are Excel VBA Objects and how to use them?
How do you like this VBA Application? How would you enhance it?
This application is one simple example of what you can do with VBA. Learning how to use Excel & VBA can enable you do several more awesome things at your work & life.
Do you like this application? How would you have designed it? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
Join Our VBA Classes
We run an online VBA (Macros) Class to make you awesome. This class offers 20+ hours of video content on all aspects of VBA – right from basics to advanced stuff. You can watch the lessons anytime and learn at your own pace. Each lesson offers a download workbook with sample code. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
[...] Related: Charting Principles, How to compare actual values with budgets [...]
[...] Excel Charting Alternatives to compare values [...]
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] work laptop I have a favorites folder just dedicated to Excel charts. Its got things like “Best Charts to Compare Actuals vs Targets” and “Best charts to show progress“. I love me some charts […]
I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.