Over the years, we have discussed a whole heap of techniques to visualize budget vs. actual charts. Today let’s take a ride on this slope again and learn another fun, silly & awesome way to depict target vs. actual progress.
Introducing biker on a hill chart
Tada!!!
Biker on a hill!?! Don’t worry, I didn’t fall down on a descent and lose my brain. I am talking about an Excel chart to visualize target vs. actual progress on a time line with biker on a hill analogy. See the chart, you will know:
Looks interesting? Read on to learn how to create this in Excel.
Get your data
The biker on a hill chart is suitable when you have a huge target that should be achieved in several days, each with individual target. So input data looks like this:
Let’s say this data is in a table named progress. As you can guess, first three columns are inputs. Last column is calculated with a simple SUM formula to get cumulative target values. The formula used here is
=SUM(E3,[@Target])
Where E3 refers to the cell above first row.
Calculate hill and biker co-ords
The hill is a simple X-Y chart with progress[Date] as X and progress[Target-Cumulative] as Y.
The tricky part is finding biker co-ordinates. We need 2 sets of values.
- Actual biker position based on the amount of work completed.
- Target biker position based on the amount of work that should have been completed.
Let’s understand the math behind this.
Actual biker position:
Y value (actual completed): This is simply SUM(progress[Completed])
X value (corresponding date): Now this is tricky. We need to find what date corresponds to the actual progress made based on the set targets. for this we need to find several things:
- Corresponding row #: Using MATCH(), we find out what value in the cumulative target column matches the progress completed so far.
- We will then find two dates between which the progress completed falls between, using MATCH formulas.
- Finally, we will interpolate the corresponding date between these two dates using simple arithmetic.
Target biker position:
Y value (target): Target as of latest date, using either VLOOKUP or INDEX+MATCH
X value (date): this is simply date in corresponding row # that is calculated above.
Create the biker on hill chart
Step 1: Create an XY chart for the hill
Setup an XY chart where X=progress[Date] and Y=progress[Target-Cumulative]. We get this.
Step 2: Add target & actual bikers
Add two more series to the chart. Target biker and actual biker using the X&Y values calculated above. We get this.
Step 3: Replace the dots with biker images
This is easy. Download a clip art image of cyclist from internet. Paste it on your Excel workbook. Remove any background. Rotate the biker image by 30° or so. As this is not a real life biker on hill, we can afford 30° gradients.
Once you have new rotated biker, reduce the image size if necessary and clone it.
Change colors using format image > Color options (see here for detail).
Essentially, go from the image on left to right.
Now that you have biker images, replace the dots with bikers using following instructions.
- Select biker image and copy (Ctrl+C)
- Click on the dot in your chart
- Press Ctrl+V to paste image
- Viola, your chart now shows bikers instead of dots for actual and target values.
At this stage our chart looks like this.
Step 4: Move the bikers up
Because Excel places the dot right on the line, the biker image too will be centered on it. So instead of looking a biker on hill, our chart looks like the biker is buried half in the hill. Not good, whether you are a fictional or real biker. So let’s pull the bikers.
We can do this by simply adding an offset value to the Y values. A value of 7 should work. But you can tweak this depending on your chart / image sizes.
Once we fix the calculations, our chart looks like this.
Extra bells and lights
Bikers are known to pimp their rides with all sorts of doodads. We can show similar enthusiasm for our biker on a hill chart and add few more details. Here is one version after adding information about current progress status and forecast date of completion.
The math for this is quite boring and simple. So I leave it to your imagination.
Download Biker on a hill – Target vs. Actual Chart Template
Click here to download biker on hill chart. Play with input data to move the biker towards target. Examine calculation section or chart to learn more.
Thanks GraH for the inspiration
Time for a confession. The biker on a hill chart idea isn’t mine. I got this from GraH, one of our readers. He left a comment on a recent blog post and I liked the idea. So I wrote this blog post explaining how we can all create a biker on hill chart in Excel.
Hui rules! But nevertheless, the creativity on this blog and the contribution of the bloggers are inspiring. And really enabling people to be aweSUM in XL, like you say.
I followed a training on Excel Dashboards in 2015 and your site was highly recommended by our cool trainer.
I became aware that XL can-do much more. Ingredients are a little imagination, dare to experiment and knowledge on how to combine techniques/functions.
In short within 2 weeks I will give a 1 hour XL awareness training in my company during open training week. I just sent a teaser with stuff I found here and on other XL-guru’s sites to my HR department. Within the next 5 minutes my proposition was approved. The reply was “Excellent idea!”
And the funny thing is that I found an XL soul-mate only a few seats away. Now we make each other crazy with challenges and/or things we learn about XL. The very first thing we made for a manager was a biker (representing his team) climbing a mounting (of work) towards the finish (the volume to reach at end of day). Depending on current status, different motivational talk appears in the title. The manager could not believe we just made a simple chart.
So thanks GraH for the cool idea.
How do you visualize target vs. actual progress?
I prefer conditional formatting icons and thermometer charts for budget / target vs. actual progress charts. Sometimes I use a bullet chart or variations of thermometer charts too. I have also used burndown charts (same concept as biker on hill charts). I like the biker on hill chart and may use it for some of my upcoming work.
What about you? What charts do you use to depict target vs. actual progress? How do you like biker on hill chart? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section.
35 Responses to “Skip weekends while autofilling dates in excel”
[...] Original post by Chandoo [...]
Hi,
Is there any way that I will choose which are my "working days"?
means, I want to leave also Friday as a free day and not only Saturday.
Or, maybe someday I will pick Tuesday as a day off.
I need to also peek Wednessday, Thursday and Friday as days off. Also, for Tuesday, I would need to leave it off once every two weeks. Is there a way to easy achieve this, so that I won't actually add to my workload?
Hi Mihai... you can use pattern fill feature to do this. Simply follow steps in below demo.
Hi,
I am using MS Office 2007 and for some reason, it does not show me these options. It just shows me 3 options:
Copy Cell (Not sure about the exact text)
Copy with Formatting
Copy without Formatting
Any idea how to get those options up?
Regards,
Deep
@Deep : I am not so well versed with 2007, but here is how you can do this using menus:
enter first date of the series
select the range you want to fill
go to menu > edit > fill > series
in the dialog, select date as the series type and "weekdays only" option
press ok...
Let me know if this doesnt work...
Now that was FAST!!!
I tried it but unfortunately it didn't work..
Here is the screenshot:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6573/excelsheetyr2.gif
This is what I tried..
I put the date in one row, in another row, added some calculations (as you can see in the image) and drag the content in other rows..
I could not find any Edit menu so i just clicked on the icon as you have shown in the 2nd image..
I hope I did the right thing...
Hmm...
there should be an edit menu as far as I know. Let me check that...
meanwhile... if it works you can use formulas to fill the series.
1. just enter the first date
2. in the 2nd row, enter a formula like =if(weekday(firstdatecell,2)=6,firstdatecell+2, firstdatecell+1)
3. copy the formula over the rest of the range...
@Deep:
you have to use the autofill handle, the small box at the lower right of the active cell. Right click on the autofill handle and drag down to the cells you want to autofill. A menu pops up showing the weekdays only option and others.
@Chandoo - Thanks but it did not work with my calculations. 🙁
@Robert - Yes, it worked this time but I guess, in my case it won't work as I want to add up the days from the column on the left. (As shown in the image)
Basically this is what I want:
1. I want to define project start date
2. There are no. of days assigned for each module
3. I want excel to calculate the date automatically. (By adding up the no. of days and deducting the weekends)
Any kind of help is appriciated.
Reagrds,
Deep
@Deep,
sorry, I misunderstood your question, I thought you would be searching for the autofill-function only (values).
If I got your request corrctly now, you could use the WORKDAY-function, returning the date before or after a specified number of workdays.
In Excel 2003 and earlier the Add-In Analysis Toolpak has to be installed, but since you are using 2007, it should work immediately.
@Deep.. as Robert suggested, Workday is what you should be using. It will calculate future date based number of working days you want to add to input date. Also, you can use this with your own list of holidays.
Thanks Robert, Chandoo.. I will try the things.. 🙂
I tried it and this time it worked.. Thanks to both of you.. you guys made my life much more easier 🙂
[...] You can also customize excel lists so that you can auto-fill, lets say bank holidays in your country or types of beer in your pub. One more auto fill trick. [...]
Hello,
I understand how to turn off the weekend values for a date fill in a regular auto fill. But, what if you are trying to create a custom one, that counts the amount of days in the formula bar, like 2 days, then 5 days, then 1 day etc etc etc, but they must be working days only and they must not include the weekends.
can that be done?
thanks!
hi..
i'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to insert current date automatically
then it suppose not to change after i save and open it on the next day.I need it to stay on the issued date.
i'm using Today function and it is not well work 4 me.
anybody can help to resolve my prob here?
please...
Hi guys,
How about if I just wanna fill up with weekend? The way I am doing now is using the function weekday and use filter to get weekend. Would appreciate if any one comes up with a better idea. Thank you very much.
Regards
Cheng
What happened to being able to indicate the series by adding a few cells and then using the autofill to copy? I can't get this to work - I need 4 rows with the same date skipping weekends.
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
Hi Kathy, sorry for a late comment. However, here's the solution.
1.) put your 1st desired date in the 1st 4 cells required (e.g. <cell A1:A4> 2/6/2012)
2.) put the following formula as is in the following four cell (i.e. A5:A8)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)=5,A1+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
Note: "=5" denotes the number of working days in the week
"+3" denotes the number of days on weekends.
"+1" last denotes the number of days after the working date.
3.) Finally, select cells A4:A8 and then drag drown for furthur dates. The formula will skip Saturday & Sunday in the dates.
Let me know, if you want to tweak the formula as per other ways.
Kamlesh: Thanks for the formula. That was what I was looking for. It works the same in Google Docs Spreadsheets. At first I thought it didn't and did some unnecessary tweaking to make it work.
I was confused by the "IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)" the modifier 2. I took it out and surpise, the formula didn't work right. I changed the 5 to 6 and then it worked. Turns out, (you probably know this) the default week starts with Sunday. Using 2 makes it start with Monday.
Any way, I didn't know about the Weekday function. Thanks for sharing this post.
Hi, Kamlesh, before i was using "workday" instead of "weekday" but it didn't work.
thanks for sharing the right formula.
At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast
coming yet again to read further news.
Hi,
I'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to calculate a workday
4 nov 2014(a1) to 12 nov 2014(a2)
Normally i'm using Int formula to do this
=int(a2)-int(a1)
But, hey thats including weekend too... 😀
how do you calculate workday with this condition ?
and if there is not only those day, i mean in a month or two
Thanks before
sagari
@Sagari
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1)
=7
You can also include holidays into the formula by having a list of holidays in say A1:A10
Then use
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1,A1:A10)
Thanks for replying
Get #NAME? in return when using NETWORKDAYS.INTL
But get 7 with NETWORKDAYS
why ??
Hi
i had a query while making a template for one of my school daily task.
Most of the work in these template includes copy from webpage and paste in the template.
so the problem here is, whenevr me or my mates try to do ctrl+v
the format of the cell changes automatically.
I suggested them to use ctrl+alt+v (text) to paste
but they are not ok with it. they want me to make template in such a way that it should work with normal ctrl +v
Any ideas guys ?
Our working week is Tuesday to Saturday if I wish to make a sheet solely using those days is there a formula I can use ?
I need your support for date.
I wand to numbering actual working date based on date
below is expected result... so how can apply formula to get number automatically... please help me get resolve this problem... many thanks in advanced.
1 8/1/2018
2 8/2/2018
3 8/3/2018
8/4/2018
8/5/2018
4 8/6/2018
5 8/7/2018
6 8/8/2018
7 8/9/2018
8 8/10/2018
8/11/2018
8/12/2018
9 8/13/2018
10 8/14/2018
11 8/15/2018
12 8/16/2018
13 8/17/2018
8/18/2018
8/19/2018
14 8/20/2018
15 8/21/2018
16 8/22/2018
17 8/23/2018
18 8/24/2018
Dear Sir,
I want to make a series of December month which will show all the dates without Fridays.
Is it Possible sir??
Interesting question Salauddin... The built-in options in Excel can't generate dates like this. But you can use simple formulas to make up such a series.
In first cell (say A1) write the starting date (1-Dec-2019 for example). Makesure this date is not a Friday.
In the next cell (A2) write =WORKDAY.INTL(A1,1,16)
Now drag down the A2 cell to fill up dates. Stop when you reach the end of your range of dates.
If your Excel doesn't have WORKDAY.INTL(), then use the below alternative formula.
=A1+1+(WEEKDAY(A1)=5)
Thank you, Thank you very much sir. it worked perfectly & I was expecting something like that.
i want to make a template with date that skips fortnightly is it possible in excel
Hi Chandoo, I need to skip weekends from a specified list of dates.
from the below information I want to pick only the weekdays amount only along with lookup which has builder name separately.
Date Builder Units Amount
06-Jan-08 Doug 8 389
09-Feb-08 Dave 10 385
15-Mar-08 Dave 3 771
18-Apr-08 Brian 5 313
05-May-08 Larry 10 574
22-May-08 Rob 8 730
25-Jun-08 Morgan 4 471
15-Aug-08 Jones 1 548
12-Dec-08 Doug 3 323
10-Apr-09 Dave 5 712
14-May-09 Dave 9 432
10-Sep-09 Brian 6 460
31-Oct-09 Larry 3 741
18-Sep-08 Rob 8 580
25-Nov-08 Doug 6 685
29-Dec-08 Dave 2 401
24-Mar-09 Dave 10 342
04-Jul-09 Brian 8 475
21-Jul-09 Larry 3 535
07-Aug-09 Rob 3 663
26-Feb-08 Gill 10 762
22-Oct-08 Jones 5 425
08-Nov-08 Doug 1 639
27-Apr-09 Dave 4 409
27-Sep-09 Dave 4 612
01-Sep-08 Brian 6 688
17-Jun-09 Larry 10 663
24-Aug-09 Rob 5 608
23-Jan-08 Morgan 6 388
Thank you! I've been struggling with this for ages and today, thanks to this post, I finally figured that I had to customize my toolbar in order to utilise the "Fill" menu. This will make my monthly reports much, much neater