Let us take a minute and bask in some glory, for, our little community at PHD had the most fantastic month ever.
That is right, January 2010 is so far the best month since I started blogging. We have broken all sorts of previous records on content, conversations, connections, traffic and revenue.
In January, we had 20 posts and 425 comments (highest ever). There were 117 thousand visitors reading 353 thousand pages. Our RSS subscriber base grew to 7790 (it was 2068 an year ago). January is the best month in terms of revenue too. We sold highest number of Project Management Templates and Formula E-books. The site even made more $s on Google Ads than it ever did.
Personally too, the month has been terrific. Jo and I celebrated our third marriage anniversary (we also finished 8 years since we started dating). I got promoted at work and Microsoft renewed my MVP award for one more year. Finally, I got my act together and started working on Excel School.
Awesome is the feeling that comes to my mind. I hope you started the new year with flying colors too.
The website success is all due to YOU. You have been kind enough to comment, e-mail, encourage, ask, share and learn. Without you, this milestone means very little to me. Thank you. Thank you very much.
To celebrate this little achievement, I have indulged in frivolous chart porn and made a small poster. See it below:
(I removed all numbers from revenue section. Lets just say, PHD has been keeping both my mind and pocket happy. 🙂 )
Bonus Charting Tip:
Of course, we dont want to waste a post with some frivolous navel gazing. So, let me share a cool charting trick with you. You can highlight Maximum value in a chart (like above) by,
- First format the entire series in a dull color (like above). To do this, just select the series, change the “fill color”
- Now, click on the series, and while series is selected, just click on the maximum item once again. Now, the maximum item alone will be selected.
- Just change the fill color of this item to some strong, contrasting color (like above).
- That is all… (learn more: using color, charting principles).
PS: Excel School registration opens on Monday. There will be a post announcing it in the next few hours.
PPS: If you are saying Excel What?!?, you should watch this.
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
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