This series of articles will give you an overview of how to manage spreadsheet risk. These articles are written by Myles Arnott from Excel Audit
- Part 1: An Introduction to managing spreadsheet risk
- Part 2: How companies can manage their spreadsheet risk
- Part 3: Excel’s auditing functions
- Part 4: Using external software packages to manage your spreadsheet risk
In the first article in this series we highlighted the risks that poorly managed spreadsheet solutions can introduce to a business. In this article we will demonstrate how companies can manage this risk.
A formal governance framework
The first, and arguably most important step is to ensure that the senior management team buy into the need for a robust spreadsheet risk management framework, and that they define and effectively communicate their spreadsheet risk management policy.
Spreadsheets identified and catalogued
It is impossible to know the level of spreadsheet risk in an organization without first identifying and then risk assessing all of the spreadsheets. It is therefore necessary to create a catalog of all of the spreadsheets and then to gather the key information about each spreadsheet to enable a risk assessment to be carried out.
The two key factors for determining the spreadsheet risk are the probability of there being an error and the impact that that error could have.
Risk = Probability of an error X impact if an error were to occur
The probability of error is related to the complexity of the spreadsheet. Complexity attributes differ across companies but include:
- Spreadsheet size (Mbs)
- Spreadsheet design (hard coded numbers in formulae, poor model structuring etc)
- The number of users
- The use of complex formulae (particularly array formulae, nested formulae etc)
- The number of cells populated
- The number of internal and external links
- The use of VBA
The impact of the error is related to how critical the spreadsheet is within the business. Each company will have a slightly different definition of the impact levels of spreadsheets, but generally:
- A spreadsheet is low impact if it is not used as part of a critical business process and an error would not have a material impact on the business.
- A spreadsheet is medium impact if it contains confidential information and an error could have a material impact on the business.
- A spreadsheet is high impact if it contains highly confidential information and an error would have a significant impact on the business. Spreadsheets used within processes that fall under external regulation (such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Solvency II) are deemed to be of high impact.
Finally, the spreadsheets should be placed in order of risk. Those identified as business critical and high risk should be prioritized for detailed review and placed under control.
This is clearly an on-going process. As new spreadsheets are developed they will need to pass through the risk assessment process as defined by the company’s spreadsheet risk management policy. A periodic review should also be carried out to ensure that all spreadsheets have been correctly categorized.
A best practice standard
The company should define its own best practice spreadsheet development standard that is applied to spreadsheets deemed to be medium or high impact. The standard should clearly outline the standards and conventions to which a spreadsheet should be built. New developments can then be reviewed to ensure that they adhere to the standard.
We advocate the use of the Excel Best Practice Standard from the Spreadsheet Standards Review Board (‘SSRB’).
We also recommend that tailored schedules are added to the standard to reflect your specific design standards. For example this could be a specific color scheme, use of logo or the use of specific text within the header or footer (e.g. document security levels).
Testing
A fundamental, but often overlooked step in the Excel model development cycle is testing. All spreadsheets (but especially business critical spreadsheets) need to be first peer reviewed and then rigorously tested.
It helps to consider the steps that an IT department would take to ensure that something they deliver is correct. It will pass through stages of unit and system testing prior to quality assurance and finally user acceptance testing. So why should a spreadsheet being used for a critical process be any different?
The fact is that no matter how hard we try, humans make errors. The purpose of testing is to identify them and get them resolved before the model goes into the live environment.
Remember that in the first article we highlighted the fact that 94% of spreadsheets and 5% of all formulae within spreadsheets contain errors.
Here is Scott Adams’ view on spreadsheet testing in Dilbert
Training
All staff should be trained so that they have sufficient Excel knowledge for their role and to use the spreadsheets that they are responsible for. As part of the induction process all staff should also be taught the company’s best practice standard.
Whilst this sounds obvious, research has shown that few companies prioritize investment in spreadsheet training.
Documentation
A key risk with spreadsheets is that they are often built and used by one individual within a team (often referred to as a “key man dependency”). If this person is ill or leaves unexpectedly the other members are totally reliant on the documentation left behind. From experience this rarely exists.
Each spreadsheet that is used within a process should as a bare minimum have documentation stating:
- the purpose of the spreadsheet;
- how the spreadsheet fits within the process;
- the source of all inputs for the spreadsheet;
- all key assumptions and drivers;
- key calculations;
- distribution list for outputs.
Spreadsheets that are part of as critical business process should have detailed documentation. This should include a technical specification and user notes.
Security
All business critical and confidential spreadsheets should be subject to access control. Security controls can be implemented across three levels:
- Directory level: Only specific individuals have access to key directories
- File level: Confidential and critical spreadsheets should be password protected to restrict access
- Cell level: Non-input cells should be password protected
Change control, backups and archives
To minimize the risk of losing the current version of a spreadsheet and ensuring that the correct version is being used at all times, all business critical spreadsheets should be backed up, archived and subject to change control procedures.
So, in summary..,
the characteristics of a well-managed environment are:
- a formal governance framework, sponsored by the senior management team, is in place for all spreadsheet development;
- a catalog of spreadsheets is maintained and prioritized by risk profile;
- a best practice standard is applied to the development of all new spreadsheets;
- all new spreadsheets pass through a formal risk assessment, are peer reviewed and formally tested;
- staff are provided with sufficient training to carry out their roles;
- all spreadsheets and their associated processes are well documented;
- access to critical spreadsheets is subject to security controls;
- spreadsheets are subject to change control and are regularly backed up and archived.
What next?
In the next article we will look at the built in Excel functions that can help you to manage spreadsheet risk.
What about you?
How do you (or your company) manage spreadsheet risk? What best practices & guidelines you follow? Please share using comments.
Thank you Myles
Many thanks to Myles for writing this series. Your experience in this area is invaluable. If you enjoy this series, drop a note of thanks to Myles thru comments. You can also reach him at Excel Audit or his linkedin profile.
49 Responses to “Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel!”
Excellent post again from awesome chandoo.org
This is one of the post to evident, without using macros we can create excellent charts using available excel options.
Slicer is one of the useful option in excel 2010 .. excited to see more options in excel 2013.
Regards,
Saran
http://www.lostinexcel.blogspot.com
Nice one chandoo............... great work done.....
Cool article. Only downside was that I didn't see at first that I needed 2010. Guess I still have to wait awhile before getting to try this out myself.
I consider myself an Excel expert, but you constantly amaze me with posts like this. Fantastic calendar!
Good post, like this little trick!!
How to not show the value in the cell
format the cell to custom with the below
;;;
Could you add lists of holidays to be transferred to the calendar days?
Two lists would be needed: 1) for the holidays that stay fixed (eg, CHristmas), and 2) for the holidays that move around (eg, Thanksgiving).
Such lists would be prepared externally, and the program would transfer their information to the appropriate days.
Wow! This is something amazing. I am going to do some practicals with this and show a sales trend on this. As we have our sales plans weekly basis, this should impress by boss when put in dashboard. Cool.
And thanks1
Chandoo you have a knack of getting on to these great looking very creative ideas!
One thing with calendars I have seen before is not catering for able to enter notes or appointments or project milestones. But with this one it's easy enough to add the extra lines as you have done for the chart concept and link to this other type of info.
For 2003 we could replace slicers with a validation style dropdown couldn't we?
Chandoo, you are awesome;) i was using calender to show my reports, but i had made all months and then underneith date shows the value, man its really awesome . i am going to use this format for my reports.. only draw back for me is i am using 2007. hence no slicer.. may be have to modify with out slicer.
Why not use =weeknum() for the weeknum column?
Great tricks! I love trying to reproduce the charts myself to get the hang of 'em. This one was great.
My only issue is getting the VBA in the year object to refresh the data. I used the VBA provided at the link, and, I can see it in the Macros tab, but, when I click the spinner the data does not update. Any tips?
Thx!
3G
^^Ignore this! NOT ENOUGH COFFEE YET.
I forgot about the "Assign Macro" option
:-s
Just started at chandoo - this is great!
I opted to use the formula =IF(F6>F5,G5,G5+1) for my weeknum - worked for me (I didn't get all the way through the example, since I'm running Excel 2007 - so don't know if that'll affect anything later in the example). I'm open to comments on this alternative approach.
Thanks for creating this website!
VC (Excel student).
Very cool - but now I'm even more excited for the new time controls for Excel 2013!
Great calendar...
I wonder whether we can make a school calendar (Class, subjects, teachers) using this calendar, assuming the weekly plan is duplicated across the year.
I would love to be a part of creating a class schedule...I'm attempting to help a friend (gratis) to do just that - can you point me in the right direction or provide a sample of sorts?
[...] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. [...]
Hello Chandoo,
Great works! I learn a lot from this website. Here is the problem I met when I follow your tutorial: once I run and save this cool pivot calendar chart , the size of excel file will increase every time. Could you let me know how to figure it out? Thank you for your time in advance.
An excel chart-fan from China.
I already figured it out.
wow, love the calendar, i'm a newbie, found this site and it's amazing.
Got it mostly figured out, but could do with help with your named range 'tblchosen'
I can build the pivots, link the calendars together but can't see how to use index(tblchosen...) to pull through the productivity figures
appreciate any help
thanks
Great. Miss the Today button. Will try and figure a way to add this to the file.
I want to start the week on Monday, not Sunday (MTWTFSS). Re-arranging the calendar tab works however, any month where the 1st is a Sunday starts on the second and totally omits Sun 1. I have been tinkerign for a while, but can't seem to figure this out.
Changing F2 on the 'Calcs' tab to 2 so that the week starts on Monday works.
Cutting & pasting Sunday on the 'Pivot Calendar' tab and moving all cells up 1 row works.
However, using April 2013 for example, you lose the 1st off of the pivot calendar so that the month starts on 2 April. What should happen is the first row should only show Sun 1 April and then the next row starts Mon 2 April. Still can't fugure out where the problem lies.
"Further Enhancements:
Adjust week start to Monday: Likewise, you can modify your formulas to adjust weekstart to Monday or any other day you fancy."
I have tinkered with this previously with no success, does anyone know which formulas require tinkering, I have only succeeded in breaking this in an effort start a week on a Monday.
[...] Interactivo Artículo original var dd_offset_from_content = 50; var dd_top_offset_from_content = 0; Tags: 2013, calendario, [...]
Completely off topic, but how do you create those animated pictures in your tutorials? It is not a movie (like the Youtube movie), so what software do you use to create such high quality "animated" pictires? Thanks
Jeroen
the animated pics are called Animated Gifs
they are made using Camtasia
Refer: http://chandoo.org/wp/about/what-we-use/
This is fairly easy to do just using calendar formulas, which would be quicker, and doesn't need VBA? Am I missing something?
[...] on how to generate an interactive calendar using pivot tables. Please check out Chandoo’s Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel before reading this, as I want to go through how I used his method to adapt a calendar which was [...]
Great tip shared by you... howevr would appreciate if you could mention in your tricks about excel version. The example above would work only in excel 2010 and above I believe. Please help me if there is any way we can use the tip in excel 2007 as well..
Many Thanks,
Regards,
FK
Hi, I'm going to give this a shot, but one small question before I do. Can a linked cell be updated based on the date that is selected from the calendar? The calendar is really cool and this would make is especially good to use (and easy and fast).
Regards,
swissfish.
This post is awesome, and using your instructions, I was able to get this to work with a pivot table that pulls directly from a Project Server database. It was a bit complicated to get the day to sum correctly, but I managed to finagle it. I hope you don't mind if I link back to you when I post my instructions.
Thanks for giving me a starting point for this!
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ [...]
This is great, and pretty much everything I was looking for.
However, I already have a large spreadsheet, and I want to include your worksheets in it. I copied all the worksheets and the Module 1, but I can't get it to work. What else do I need to transfer / update please?
Hello there, is it possible to use this pivot to produce a calendar style chart, with returns multiple data per date, which on the calendar then, when clicked links to the data to provide more background information? What do you think? I'd love if I could pivot when i need. thanks, m
Hi, did you ever figure out how to do this? I would love to find a way...
This is amazing and will work well for my calendar project! My question is, how can I expand the calendar to fit a standard sheet of paper?
Wow - this is so creative. I'm taking the basic idea and building a reservation calendar.
Question: How do you get the month and year slicers on a different page than the pivot tables? I'd like to have my final calendar on a separate page from the pivot.
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ […]
This is perfect...is there a way to add notes/tasks to the individual days?
Excel will not let me insert blank rows between lines in the pivot table. I am use Excel 2013 - is there a pivot table tools command that must be used?
I can create the pivot table calender with a year spinner & month slicer but I do not see how to display the the attendance information that I have in the original data table.
Thank you for the wonderful post and I am sorry for my lack of understanding...
Excellent!
Please show me how to add an alternative calendar to this calendar, Chinese or lunar calendar (and by lunar I don't mean phases of the moon), like what they still use in Asia
Thanks
Christopher
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hello my name is Maurice, excuse me for my further request, but believe me, without your help priprio not know how to solve this problem.
So: always using a chart positioned on an excel sheet I wanted to match each square (series) to a single cell, to create a perpetual calendar.
Now everything works fine; except that for a fact, and it is this: In the calendar as you well know some numbers may not be apparent until certain conditions, which I solved by writing this "= O code (AA5 = DATE ( $ H $ 1; MONTH ($ AD $ 12) +1; 1)) and the game and done.
Now I would like to achieve the same thing using the Chart; How can I do to make this happen! let me also just a practical example so that I can understand all the rest then I'll do; Thanks Greetings from A.Maurizio
Link Program : Link: https://app.box.com/s/lhqva3eji0xcf2nmk8lxyki88tt1mi5t
Great info, thanks for sharing
Hi,
I love your calendar however I am modifying it for use in displaying employee performance metrics on a day by day basis.
I see where tblChosen and tblDates are named ranges however I cannot find them anywhere.
Are they assigned to specific cells because I cannot tell.
I see both of them in the Name Manager, which tells me what they refer to but does not give a value or cell location.
@Mike
With the Names in the Name Manager
Simply select the name
Then click in the Refers To: box at the Bottom
Excel will take you to where the Named Range is referring to
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hi, Chandoo
This Pivot Calendar is an excellent idea. I’ve done one for myself using your guidelines. I just need something I’m not being able to do. I need that when I open the file the default date is set to today’s date. I know how to do it with conditional formatting. But I think I’ll need some vba coding for this. Can you please help me with this. Thanks in advance