This is a guest post by Vijay, our in-house VBA Expert.
Hello Everyone,
This post shows how to make project risk maps using VBA. If you have modern versions of Excel (365, 2019 or 2016 with TEXTJOIN() function), see the Excel Risk Map Template page.
We all have some projects to manage every now and then and there are needs of various trackers that help us in gauging the progress of the same. One of the most important things are heat maps that quickly help us in visually displaying the names of the projects that need special attention and resolve issues that are impacting them.
So go ahead and grab a cup of coffee and read this article that would help you in creating a Risk Heat Map in excel (will use some double shot espresso in the form of VBA code) to help us to the target.
Before we begin – Data for Project Risk Maps
First of all we will understand what we are trying to create here by looking at the image below.
You would have seen a picture like this while managing project risks.
So today we will be learn how to create this in Excel to become more awesome in managing projects.
What is important here is how your data for the projects/entities being tracked laid out. We will use the Excel data tables [structured references] to help us here.
There is a Setup sheet in the excel file where we can add the names of the projects that we will use on the data table, as well as the Probability and Impact have been defined as data tables. This helps us in using their contents as drop down options in the data table.
Adding Named Ranges
We need to use the Name Manager to create named ranges to be able to use the data table columns as drop down items, this is show below.
- 1.Type this in a blank cell and then copy “=tblProject[Project]”.
- 2.Bring up the Name Manager by pressing CTRL + F3, or by going to the Formula’s Tab and clicking on Name Manager.
- 3.Click on New
- 4.Type the name lstProject in the Name box
- 5.Paste “=tblProject[Project]” in the Refers To box and the click on OK.
Repeat this process for “=tblProbability[Probability]” and “tblImpact[Impact]”
Now you can go the actual risk data table and select the Project columns first blank cell and put in Data Validation List here, choose List and put the Source as lstProject. Repeat this for Probability and Impact cells. You will only need to this one time for the first row, new rows when added to the table will automatically contain these settings.
After we have created the above data table, we need to add 3 columns to the right side where we will setup the calculation that will be used to update the risk map.
a) First Column is named as “ProbabilityScore” Since probability has been marked as “A, B, C or D”, we would need to convert this into a number. This is done by using the below formula.
=IFERROR(CHOOSE(MATCH([@Probability],lstProbability,0),4,3,2,1),””)
b) Second Column is named as “SearchString”
=IF([@Status]=”Open”,CONCATENATE(“x”,[@ProbabilityScore]^4+[@Impact]),””)
c) Third column is named as “DisplayName”
=CONCATENATE([@ID],” “,LEFT([@Project],20),IF(LEN([@Project])>20,”…”,””))
Understanding the SearchString Table
When creating the SearchString we are raising the probability score to the power of 4, this is what I have chosen you may select any number that you need. Below is the resulting matrix of numbers that we obtain by doing this.
The last columns in only used for trimming the name of the project to 20 characters of there is a big name, else the actual name of the project is used to display in the Risk Map.
Understanding the Code
So now we are ready to look into the VBA code that helps us in creating the Risk Map.
Public Function showRiskMap(inputRange As Range, searchString As String, dataRange As Range, separator As String)
Dim cntr As Long
Dim tempArray() As Variant
Dim tempDataArray() As Variant
Dim tempString As String
tempArray = inputRange.Value
tempDataArray = dataRange.Value
For cntr = LBound(tempArray) To UBound(tempArray)
If tempArray(cntr, 1) = searchString Then
tempString = tempString & tempDataArray(cntr, 1) & separator
End If
Next
showRiskMap = tempString
End Function
We are sending 4 parameters to this function which are
- inputRange – this is the SearchString columns data
- SearchString – this is a manual enrty such as “x257”
- dataRange – this is the Display Name column from where we will pick the name of the project to display
- separator – this is CHAR(10) which is a line break in case we have multiple projects falling in the same category
We are making use of Array’s here to pass the data from the Table column into the array and then a simple For loop to parse them and show us the results.
I hope you will enjoy this article and this assist in managing your projects in a much efficient way.
Download Excel Risk Map File
Click here to download the file & use it to understand this technique.
Click here for Risk Map Template for new versions of Excel.
Do you use Excel for creating Risk Maps?
Do you also user Excel for creating Risk Maps? If yes please put in the comment below how do you use the same and what has been your experience. Leave a comment.
More on VBA & Macros
If you are new to VBA, Excel macros, go thru these links to learn more.
Join our VBA Classes
If you want to learn how to develop applications like these and more, please consider joining our VBA Classes. It is a step-by-step program designed to teach you all concepts of VBA so that you can automate & simplify your work.
Click here to learn more about VBA Classes & join us.
About Vijay
Vijay (many of you know him from VBA Classes), joined chandoo.org full-time this February. He will be writing more often on using VBA, data analysis on our blog. Also, Vijay will be helping us with consulting & training programs. You can email Vijay at sharma.vijay1 @ gmail.com. If you like this post, say thanks to Vijay.
17 Responses to “Budget vs. Actual Profit Loss Report using Pivot Tables”
Good Work, Yogesh & Chandoo! Thanks.
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
Hi Yogesh and Chandoo,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
You guys are great!
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
Thanks a lot for sharing the most powerful tool worldwide "knowledge"
Warm greetings from Peru
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
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
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!
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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