Pop quiz: What is wrong with below report?
At first glance, it looks alright. But if you observe closely, you realize that it is not telling the entire story. Just looking at regional sales numbers, you have not much clue what is going on with them.
So how to improve it?
1. Add context
In order to know whether a number like $120,000 sales in South is good or bad, you need to provide some context. For example, if you include previous month sales figures, suddenly $120k is comparable to some other number. This tells a better story than a simple number alone.
You can also try these,
- Target values
- Same month last year values
- YTD, QTD values
2. Add % Change
When you have 2 numbers like $120k and $110k in a report, anyone looking at them are going to mentally calculate the % change from last month to this month. This is easy for numbers like 120 and 110, but if your numbers are like 36,450 and 43,150 then calculating % change values will take time.
Why force your audience to do this mental math? Instead show these %s on the report.
3. Highlight bad numbers
Another way to enhance your report is to highlight poorly performing regions. Since each region is different, comparing sales of one with another is not good. But you can compare % change (from previous month / same month last year / targets etc.) and highlight poorly performing regions. This can be done with conditional formatting.
So lets go ahead and do it for our report above.
3.1 Add conditional formatting
Just select the %change column, go to conditional formatting > icon sets > and choose an arrow icon set that you fancy.
3.2 The default formatting kinda sucks
We are not done yet. If you look at the default icon formatting, it looks in-accurate. We are seeing red colored, down-ward arrows even when there is a positive change. And, when the % change is negative, we no longer need minus sign (-) because it will be indicated by down arrow.
3.3 Fix the conditional formatting icons
Select the cells again, go to home > conditional formatting > manage rules. Select the rule and edit it (you can double click on the rule to edit).
Change the rule type as shown below.
3.4 Remove the minus sign
Select the %change column once again, go to format cells (ctrl+1) and set the custom formatting code 0%;0%
This will make sure that even when the percentage is negative, Excel will not show the sign (minus symbol).
Related: More on custom cell formatting in Excel.
So there you go. A regional sales report that tells better story.
Key ideas to keep in mind
In your reports, try to provide as much context as possible. This can be done by
- providing comparisons
- including additional statistics (sum, count, median etc.)
- indicating the time frame of the report
- highlighting bad numbers or areas that require attention
- giving user a choice to change report criteria (interactive features).
Do you follow these principles when making reports or dashboards?
I try to observe these ideas in all my dashboards. What about you? Are you using simple numbers in your dashboards?
Go ahead and tell us how you are making your dashboards better, in comments.
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21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?