Why do we make dashboards? To me the reason would be “to provide all the necessary information at a glance so that you can make a decision (or just get a feel)”
I think the traditional dashboards are overloaded with lots of information (and sometimes data) and often take more time to interpret. This means less time for decision making.
With that backdrop, I would like to propose a simple alternative to executive dashboards
Tweetboard
What in the name of 13 sliced pie chart is a tweetboard?
Imagine a dashboard with out charts, but with 6 to 8 sentences, each less than 140 characters, explaining the data / trends concisely. That, my dear bird, is a tweetboard.
Take a look at an example tweetboard of monthly performance and you will know what it is:
Why I think tweetboard is an alternative to dashboard?
Because with tweetboard, your focus will be on reading the sentence and figuring out what to do with your business, not on making sense of 3 bars going up and 2 going down.
How to make a tweetboard?
Simple, Download the tweetboard excel template. Now go process your data, identify the messages you want to show in the dashboard. Go type them in the tweetboard template. Take a deep breath and go tell your story to the world.
Let us discuss:
What do you think? Would you replace a dashboard with tweetboard? Do you think it can stir up a decision maker towards action.
PS: I got the idea of tweetboard while reading Juice’s article on whether dashboards should be limited to one page.
PPS: The dashboard image is from accounting web.
PPPS: This is the first post with 2 3 PSs. 😛
13 Responses to “Convert fractional Excel time to hours & minutes [Quick tip]”
Hi Purna..
Again a great tip.. Its a great way to convert Fractional Time..
By the way.. Excel has two great and rarely used formula..
=DOLLARFR(7.8,60) and =DOLLARDE(7.48,60)
basically US Account person uses those to convert some currency denomination.. and we can use it to convert Year(i.e 3.11 Year = 3 year 11 month) and Week(6.5 week = 6 week 5 days), in the same manner...
This doesn't work for me. When applying the custom format of [h]:mm to 7.8 I get 187:12
Any ideas why?
@Jason
7.8 in Excel talk means 7.8 days
=7.8*24
=187.2 Hrs
=187 Hrs 12 Mins
If you follow Chandoo's instructions you will see that he divides the 7.8 by 24 to get it to a fraction of a day
Simple, assuming the fractional time is in cell A1,
Use below steps to convert it to hours & minutes:
1. In the target cell, write =A1/24
2. Select the target cell and press CTRL+1 to format it (you can also right click and select format cells)
3. Select Custom from “Number” tab and enter the code [h]:mm
4. Done!
Hi, sorry to point this out but Column C Header is misspelt 'Hours Palyed'
good one
So how do I go the other way and get hours and minutes to fractional time?
If you have 7.5 in cell A1,
- Use int(A1) to get the hours.
- Use mod(A1,1)*60 to get minutes.
If you have 7:30 (formatted as time) in A1
- Use hours(a1) to get hours
- Use minutes(a1) to get minutes.
I had the same issue. You can solve it by changing the format as described above:
Right click cell > Format Cells > (In Number tab) > Custom > Then enter the code [h]:mm
([hh]:mm and [hhh]:mm are nice too if you want to show leading zeros)
Thanks guys, these are the tips I'm looking for.
...dividing the number of minutes elapsed by the percent change is my task - "int" is the key this time
It doesnt work for greater than 24 hours
It returns 1:30 for 25.5 hours. It should have returned 25:30
Ideally I would right function as
=QUOTIENT(A1,1)&":"&MOD(A1,1)*60
Sorry, replied to wrong comment....
----
I had the same issue. You can solve it by changing the format as described above:
Right click cell > Format Cells > (In Number tab) > Custom > Then enter the code [h]:mm
([hh]:mm and [hhh]:mm are nice too if you want to show leading zeros)
Clever use of MOD here to extract the decimal part of a number. Divide a number containing a decimal by 1 and return the remainder. Humm. Very clever.
Thanks very much, extremely useful !