On Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box Chart.
Essentially, a gantt box chart is what you get when a gantt chart and box plot go to a bar, get drunk and decide to make out. It shows the project plan like any other gantt chart, and it shows the distribution of activity end dates, like any other box plot.
You can see an example gantt box chart for a fictional software project above.
Today, we will learn how to create a similar chart in Excel. Get a steaming cup of coffee or whatever keeps you going and follow these simple steps to make a gantt box chart.
[Read this post if you want to know what GBC is and how to read it]
1. Set up your data:
Just like any other chart in excel, a gantt box chart too requires well structured data. In our case, we need 5 things.
- Activity name
- Start Date
- Best Case End Date
- Realistic (or Plan) End Date
- Worst Case End Date
Getting all the 3 variations of End dates can be tricky. But if you are managing projects for long, you might already know how to get these dates. Otherwise, here is one approach, proposed by Joel Spolsky, called as Evidence Based Scheduling that can help you.
We will also need 3 additional helper columns where we need to calculate some numbers so that our gantt box chart can be constructed without resorting to magic wands. These are,
- BC: Number of days between Start Date and Best Case End Date
- R: Number of days between Best Case End Date and Realistic Date
- W: Number of days between Realistic Date and Worst Case End Date
2. Create a Stacked Bar Chart
Add a new stacked bar chart. The series to be stacked are,
- Best case end date
- R
- W
Use the “Activity Name” column for category axis labels.
Now, our chart should look like:
3. Say your favorite curse word and Reverse the categories
Ok, time for a minor annoyance. Excel has magically showed the first activity of project at bottom. So, we need to reverse the category axis values before any further.
Just select the category axis, go to format axis (press CTRL+1) and click the little box that says “order reverse in Categories”.
Now, the chart should look like this:
4. Add Error Bars to Best Case Series
Now, add error bars to the best case series of the chart so that it looks like a line is drawn connecting best case date to start date of each activity. To do that, follow these steps:
- Select “best case end date” series.
- Add Error Bars (from format ribbon)
- Specify the type of error bar as “Negative only”
- Select “Custom” for error bar values
- Now, point the error bar values to the helper column “BC”
- Format the error bar in such a way that no cap is shown and it is thick.
At this point, our gantt box chart should look like this:
5. Finally, format the chart
Now, our gantt box chart is almost ready. But it is still ugly. We need not hire a Hollywood grade make-up man to beautify this. We just need a few clicks.
- Remove legend
- Add vertical and horizontal grid lines. Make them subtle.
- Change text colors to soothing ones.
- Remove fills from all series in stacked bar chart.
- Apply borders to 2nd and 3rd series to create a box effect.
- Format the date axis,
- Adjust the starting point (unfortunately you have to enter the number equivalent of date, like 1-May-2010 as 40299)
- Adjust major unit – I used 14 days, you can try something else depending on overall project length.
- Set the axis number formatting to d-mmm or mmm or myy or something else that works for you.
- Add a chart title
That is all. Our Gantt Box Chart is finally ready. Now, go figure why your project is not on track and do something about it.
Displaying Completed Activities:
The easiest way to show completed activities is to change all 3 end dates to the same date: that of the actual end date. This way, you just see a line when an activity is done and a box when there are variations in end dates.
Of course, you can use another helper column to show a vertical line or a symbol of your choice to denote the end point as well. I leave it to you to figure out that portion.
Download the Gantt Box Chart Template:
I have prepared an excel template for creating Gantt Box Charts quickly. Go ahead and download the version that you want.
Excel 2007+ version | Excel 2003 version
Here is a mirror with both files as a zip. Go on, be awesome 🙂
Share your experiences of using Gantt Box Chart:
If you like this chart and implementing it in one of your projects, do tell me how it went. Or just share your thoughts on this implementation and any suggestions. Go ahead and share.
Templates & Tutorials on Project Management:
- Excel Gantt Chart Template
- Project Milestones – Timeline Template
- Project Status Dashboard Template
- More resources on using Excel for Project Management
Project Management Template Set – Get a copy today
I have made a set of 24 templates that take care of various activities in a project right from planning to time sheets to issues to project status reporting thru dashboards. These templates have been bought by more than 500 project managers all over the world and they are saving hours of time every week using these templates.
Go ahead and a get a copy of my project management templates.
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