Lets say you are responsible for sales of 100s of products (which belong to handful of categories). You are looking at sales of each product in last month & this month. And you want to understand whether sales are improving or declining by category. How would you do it?
Turns out, this is not a difficult problem. In fact, this question is asked every day & answered using Advances vs. Declines chart.
You may have seen this chart in financial newspapers or websites. Shown below, Advances vs. Declines chart tells us how many items have advanced & how many have declined.
When should you use Advances vs. Declines chart?
As you can see, advances vs. declines chart does not give low level details about actual movement of values. Instead, it gives you a sense of what is going on. Use it in below situations:
- To get a feel of how values have changed over time.
- When you are dealing with data that constantly changes (sales, number of customers, defects etc.)
Create Advances vs. Declines chart in Excel
You can easily create this chart in Excel from raw data. Just follow below tutorial.
Step 1: Get the data & arrange it
You need at least 4 columns of data – item, category, previous value, current value
Once we have these, calculate % change in 5th column. Arrange data like below:
Step 2: Calculate Category-wise summaries
First list all unique categories in a column. Then using COUNTIFS formula, calculate the number of products declining & advancing.
The formula to count number of products going down by more than 10% is,
=COUNTIFS(Sales[category], Category name, Sales[% change], “<10%”)
[Related: Introduction to Excel SUMIFS / COUNTIFS Formulas]
Step 3: Calculate % break-ups for the chart
Once all the numbers are calculated, you can easily calculate the % split.
NOTE: Make sure you negate the % values for declines. This will ensure that our chart shows stacked bars on both sides of axis.
Step 4: Create a stacked bar chart from this data
Once all the numbers are in place, just select them and create a stacked bar chart. Your output should look like below:
Step 5: Adjust chart series order if needed
You may notice that, our stacked chart bars are not in correct order. Excel would have plotted <10% and >10% series before <0% and >0% series. To fix this:
- Right click on the chart
- Go to Select Data
- Now, select the series area
- Using up / down buttons adjust the order of series
- Done!
See this demo to understand:
Step 6: Adjust the colors & format the chart
Unleash your creativity and format the chart as you see fit. Make sure you add legend (otherwise the chart becomes very difficult to read).
And you are done!
Download Advances vs. Declines chart template
Click here to download the chart template. Examine the formulas & chart settings to understand this better.
Do you use Advances vs. Declines chart?
I use variations of this chart often in my dashboards & reports. These charts are very concise and present a lot of information about distribution of changes.
What about you? Do you use advances vs. declines charts? How do you create them? Share your experiences & techniques using comments.
Looking to advance your charting knowledge?
If you want to one up your Excel awesomeness quotient & create kick-ass charts, then you are at the right place. Check out below tutorials & see how deep the rabbit hole goes:
- Visualizing tax changes over time using Excel
- Index Charts – to understand change over time
- Use Box plots to understand distribution of values
- Visualize monthly changes using Pivot Tables + Conditional formatting
Recommended: If all these sound exciting, you will incredibly benefit from our Excel School program, where we teach advanced charting & data analysis skills. Click here to know more & join us.
24 Responses
I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column. You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.
@John
That is one option.
There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.
Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula? It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*). The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.
@Mathew
Your correct, There is no difference.
I thought it may have been easier to explain this method.
Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.
How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.
@RB
I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine
Count:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
Sum:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))
You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples
I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?
Hopefully this was a better explanation
Hello-
This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.
Thanks!
I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?
@Akshay
Why not just add a filter to that column to only show the values greater than zero?
The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.
@Akshay
I’d suggest making a post in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the task
I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
Thanks!
@Bob
As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1
Hai Experts,
i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
Thank you very much.
thanks for providing this.. but why does excel keeps on prompting Circular referencing in cell D3?
@Vivek
I don’t know
I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error
Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic
What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?
I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))
Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
=COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed
@ Terry
Please ask the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to ensure a quicker more accurate answer
I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?
How exactly do you do sum filtered cells when two criteria are need not just one?
Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.