Recently I had to create a Pivot report from monthly data. But there is a twist. The data is spread across multiple sheets, one for each month. Let me explain how I built the pivot for that scenario.
Step 1: Load Monthly Data File to Power Query
We can use Power Query and automatically combine all the individual sheets to one big table. For this, you need a monthly workbook that has one tab (sheet) per month. If you need sample data, check out this file.
- Create a “NEW” Excel workbook. We will use this file to combine all the monthly worksheets.
- Go to Data Ribbon and click on Get Data > From File > From Excel
- Select your monthly workbook with all the individual sheets
- In the navigator screen, select any one sheet and click on “Transform” to go to Power Query Editor.
Step 2: Combine & Clean-up Data
Once you are in Power Query Editor (PQE), we can quickly combine all monthly sheets and clean-up the data.
- Using the “Query Settings” panel on the right, delete all the steps except “Source” step. You can use the ❌ mark next to the step to delete the step.
- In the query view, expand the “Data” column so we can get all the monthly data in one big table.
But the data is not clean...!
When you “Expand” the data column, we get all the data, but a ton of problems too. Here is a summary of the key issues.
- Incorrect headers
- Repeated header rows (one per month)
- Incorrect data types (dates, numbers treated as Alpha-numeric by Power Query)
- Unwanted columns
- Null values or blank rows
- Something else?!? 😱
Fortunately, Power Query can solve all these problems quite easily.
- Set first row as headers using Home Ribbon > First Row as Headers option
- To fix nulls & repeated header rows, use filter on a column like “Sales Person” and filter away the null & title words. See this demo:
- Right click on the columns and use “Change Type” to set the correct data type.
- Using Home ribbon > Choose Columns select the columns you want.
Step 3: Load the Data to Excel
Once all the clean-up is done, rename your query to something like “Combined data” and use the Close & Load button in Home ribbon to load this data to Excel.
Pro Tip
Use the "Load to" options to load the data just to your data model instead of Excel grid. This is helpful if you just want to make pivots and don't need to "see" the data.
Step 4: Create Pivot Table(s)
Now that all the data is in one place, you can create a pivot report easily in Excel. Just select the “combined data” table and use Insert > Pivot Table to add the reports you want.
Step 5: How to update when you have "NEW" data?
Come next month, you may have another sheet in the “monthly file”. Just save the file and open the consolidated workbook (with all your pivots) and use the “Data” ribbon > Refresh All button to refresh the queries. You may need to press this twice to update the pivots too.
VIDEO: How to create a pivot table from multiple sheets of data?
Check out this video tutorial to understand how to make a pivot table from multiple sheets of data. (see it on my channel)
📂 Sample File
Download the sample data file (monthly data) to practice this concept on your computer.
What to do when you have an error? ⛔
While this trick works most of the time, you can still get some errors. Use below tips to debug / fix the problems.
- Save & Close the Monthly file: The refresh / update process may throw errors if your file is not closed. So, save and close the workbook.
- Monthly tabs should be consistently formatted: The headers and number of columns in your monthly file should match across tabs. If you have different headers or number of columns, then the combined file may have errors or incorrect values.
- Missing Data: If you notice that some data (a month for ex.) is missing in your consolidated file or pivots, try refreshing the file a few times. If that doesn’t work, go to “Query” ribbon and “Edit” the query. Once you are in PQ Editor, backtrack and locate the step that might be causing the problem.
- Any other problem? Leave a comment with the issue you faced so I can offer some guidance.
Learn More 👩💻
You can use Pivot Tables + Power Query to do so many awesome things in Excel. Check out below tutorials to master the concepts.
💥 Complete Excel + Pivot Tables + Power Query course from Chandoo
If you want to learn all the necessary Excel functionalities and how to apply them for work in one place, check out my Excel School program.
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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.