Note: This is a not an Excel tips post. It is a diary of one of the most awesome conferences I have ever attended.
I just finished attending PASS Business Analytics conference in Santa Clara (USA) and am now heading back home to India. And it has been one of the most fun, uplifting and educational experiences of my life. I met so many remarkable people in this trip.
Just to name a few, I met Dan Fylstra (one of the pioneers of VisiCalc & founder of Solver), Bob Phillips, Ken Puls, Jordan Goldmeier, Oz Du Soliel, Rick Grantham, Szilvia Juhasz, Zack Baresse, Kevin Jones, Avi Singh, Chris Webb, Rob Collie, Bill Jelen, Scott Senkeresty, Matt Allington, Jon Acampora, Marco Russo & Jen Stirrup.
I also felt fortunate to meet many of Chandoo.org fans, followers, customers & supporters who attended the conference. It was non stop fun for 3 days.
As if meeting all these great people, sharing a conversation, beer, snack, moment or ride (in a cramped backseat with 2 other Excel MVPs) with them was not enough, I also got to attend few of the amazing sessions at PASS BA.
- I learned CUBE formulas from Bob Phillips
- Introduction to R from Jen Stirrup
- Power Query trickery from Chris Webb
- Charting best practices from Jordan
- Keynote presentations by Mico & Carlo
I wish I had the time to attend more sessions. But I was busy teaching a few or meeting people.
All in all, in one word, PASS Business Conference has been AWESOME.
Couple of funny & interesting experiences from the conference:
5 MVPs in a car
At the end of day 3 (April 22nd), a bunch of us were sitting at the hotel lobby bar and chatting. When I asked Ken (Excelguru) what they are doing for dinner, Ken said Zack is taking him for dinner. Then Zack looked at me and said, “why don’t you tag along?”
By then we were 4 people – Ken, Zack, Wessex Bob & myself.
We all agreed to head back to rooms, fresh up & meet downstairs in 20 minutes.
When we all came down, Jordan was also at the bar area. So we asked him to join us.
Jordan, Bob & I shared the backseat and lots of laughs all the way to some upscale sea food restaurant in another suburb of San Francisco.
Here is a selfies from backseat of Zack’s car.
Bob, Jordan & Chandoo
We meet Kevin Jones there and we all share really amazing food, insightful (often hilarious) conversation. As Ken recently quit his job to be self-employed, we all shared our words of wisdom with him.
But the night is not over yet
We reached the hotel at 9:30. I find Rob, Scott, Matt, few members from Microsoft Excel & Power BI teams all having drinks at the lobby bar. So I joined them for more laughs, conversation & selfies.
Here is a pic with Rob, Scott, Matt & Ken
Chandoo, Rob, Matt, Scott & Ken
By the time I head to my room it was 11:30 PM.
Dany’s Recalc or Die stricker
Dany Hoter from Excel team has this cool laptop sticker.
Almost all the Excel MVPs at the conference in one epic pic
And here it is:
Zack, Jon, Bob, Ken, Chris, Marco, Gregory
Cat, Oz, Chandoo, Rick & Szilvia
My first impressions of everyone
This is the first time I met so many Excel MVPs & bloggers. Here is the first thought that came to me when I saw them.
- Ken: He is big!!! and he talks fast
- Oz: What a hat! and whats with the Sriracha hot sauce?!?
- Rick: he means business
- Dan Fylstra: Wow, he is so cool & down to earth
- Scott: Boy his laughter is really loud
- Avi: small packet of energy & enthusiasm
- Bob: funny and awesomely English
Thank you PASS & everyone who showed up
Thanks a lot to the PASS team for inviting me to this conference. I had an awesome time.
Also thanks to everyone from Chandoo.org community who signed up for this event & made it even more awesome. Thank you.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.