Related Excel Templates. Financial Comparison Template Business organizations have to deal with different clients and investors in order to arrange finances for their. Add Live Chart to SharePoint with Excel Web Access Web Part A SharePoint Online Exercise by Peter Kalmström The Excel Web Access web part, which is. 73 free and beautiful designer quality Microsoft excel charting templates, bold, intuitive and easy to use, grab them now and make your Bar, Pie Charts. Creating an Excel Dashboard (Examples & FREE Templates)An Excel Dashboard can be an amazing tool when it comes to tracking KPIs, comparing data points, and getting data- backed views that can help management take decisions. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an Excel dashboard, best practices to follow while creating one, features and tools you can use in Excel, things to avoid at all costs, and recommended training material. What is an Excel Dashboard and how does it differ from a report? Let’s first understand what is an Excel dashboard. An Excel dashboard is one pager (mostly, but not always necessary) that helps managers and business leaders in tracking key KPIs or metrics and take a decision based on it. Update Access From Excel Table Templates For IndesignIt contains charts/tables/views that are backed by data. A dashboard is often called a report, however, not all reports are dashboards. Here is the difference: A report would only collect and show data in a single place. ![]() For example, if a manager wants to know how the sales have grown over the last period and which region were the most profitable, a report would not be able to answer it. It would simply report all the relevant sales data. These reports are then used to create dashboards (in Excel or Power. Point) that will aid in decision making. A dashboard, on the other hand, would instantly answer important questions such which regions are performing better and which products should the management focus on. ![]() These dashboards could be static or interactive (where the user can make selections and change views and the data would dynamically update). Now that we have an understanding of what a dashboard is, let’s dive in and learn how to create a dashboard in Excel. How to Create an Excel Dashboard? Creating an Excel Dashboard is a multi- step process and there are some key things you need to keep in mind when creating it. Update Access From Excel Table Templates For ExcelEven before you launch Excel, you need to be clear about the objectives of the dashboard. For example, if you’re creating a KPI dashboard to track financial KPIs of a company, your objective would be to show the comparison of the current period with the past period(s). Similarly, if you’re creating a dashboard for Human Resources department to track the employee training, then the objective would be to show how many employees have been trained and how many needs to be trained to reach the target. Want to create professional dashboards in Excel? Check out my Excel Dashboard course where I show you everything about creating a world- class Excel Dashboard. I just wanted to let you know that I think your dashboard course is excellent. I have been able to produce some excellent reports in my job using what I have learned. Thank You. Matt Ward. United Kingdom. Things to Do Before You Even Start Creating an Excel Dashboard. A lot of people start working on the dashboard as soon as they get their hands on the data. And in most cases, they bring upon them the misery of reworking the dashboard as the client/stakeholder objectives are not met. Here are some of the questions you must have answered before you start building an Excel Dashboard: What is the Purpose of the Dashboard? The first thing to do as soon as you get the data (or even before getting the data), is to get clarity on what your stakeholder wants. Be clear on what purpose the dashboard needs to serve. Is it to track KPIs just one time, or on a regular basis? Does it need to track the KPIs for the whole company or division- wise? Asking the right questions would help you understand what data you need and how to design the dashboard. What are the data sources? Always know where the data comes from and in what format. In one of my projects, the data was provided as PDF files in the Spanish language. This completely changed the scope and most of our time was sucked up in manually culling the data. Here are the questions you should ask: Who owns the data? In what format will you get the data? How frequently does the data update? Who will use this Excel Dashboard? A manager would probably only be interested in the insights your dashboard provides, however, some data analyst in his team may need a more detailed view. Based on who uses your dashboard, you need to structure the data and the final output. How frequently does the Excel Dashboard needs to be updated? If your dashboards are to be updated weekly or monthly, you are better off creating a plug- and- play model (where you simply copy paste the data and it would automatically update). If it’s a one- time exercise only, you can leave out some automation and do that manually. What version of Office does the client/stakeholder uses? It’s better to not assume that the client/stakeholder has the latest version of MS Office. I once created a dashboard only to know that my stakeholder was using Excel 2. This led to some rework as the IFERROR function doesn’t work in 2. Getting the Data in Excel. Once you have a good idea of what you need to create, the next steps are to get your hands on the data and getting it in Excel. Your life is easy when your client gives you Data in Excel, however, if that is not the case, you need to figure out an efficient way to get it in Excel. If you’re supplied with CSV files or Text files, you can easily convert these in Excel. If you have access to a database that stores the data, you can create a connection and update indirectly. Once you have the data, you need to clean it and standardize it. For example, you may need to get rid of leading, trailing, or double spaces, find and remove duplicates, remove blanks and errors, and so on. In some cases, you may even need to restructure data (for example say you need to create a Pivot table). These steps would depend on the project and how your data looks in Excel. Outlining the Structure of the Dashboard. Once you have the data in Excel, you will know exactly what you can and can not use in your Excel dashboard. At this stage, it’s a good idea to circle back with your stakeholder with an outline of the Excel dashboard. As a best practice, I create a simple outline in Powerpoint along with additional notes. The purpose of this step is to make sure your stakeholder understands what kind of dashboard he/she can expect with the available data. It also helps as the stakeholder may suggest changes that would add more value for him. Here is an example of sample outline I created for one of the KPI dashboards: Once you have the outline agreed upon, it’s time to start creating the Excel dashboard. As a best practice, divide you Excel workbook into three parts: Data - This could be one or more than one worksheets that contain the raw data. Calculations - This is where you do all the calculations. Again, you may have one or more than one sheet for calculations. Dashboard - This is the sheet that has the dashboard. In most of the cases, it is a single page view that shows analysis/insights backed by data. Excel Table - The Secret Sauce of an efficient Excel Dashboard. The first thing I do with the raw data is to convert it into an Excel Table. Excel Table offers many advantages that are crucial while creating an Excel dashboard. To convert tabular data into an Excel table, select the data and go to Insert - -> Tables - -> Table. Here are the benefits of using an Excel Table for your dashboard: When you convert a tabular data set into an Excel table, you don’t need to worry about data getting changed at a later stage. Even if you get additional data, you can simply add it to the table without worrying about the formulas getting screwed up. This is really helpful when I create plug- and- play dashboards. With an Excel Table, you can use names of the columns instead of the reference. For example, instead is C2: C1. Sales’. Important Dashboard Functions. Interactive Excel dashboards run on Excel formulas. When you make a selection, or use a scroll bar or select a checkbox, there are formulas that update based on the results and give you the updated data/view in the dashboard. Here are my top five Excel functions for Excel Dashboards: SUMPRODUCT Function: It’s my favorite function while creating an interactive Excel dashboard. It allows me to do complex calculations when there are many variables. For example, suppose I have a sales dashboard and I want to know what were the sales by the rep Bob in the third quarter in the East region. I can simply createa SUMPRODUCT formula for this. INDEX/MATCH Function: I am a big proponent of using the combination of INDEX and MATCH formula for looking up data in Excel Dashboards.
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