Creating a Customizable Dashboard in Excel: Benefits, Tips, and Drawbacks

Introduction

Dashboard reports are an excellent way to showcase your data in order to quickly and efficiently make decisions. They are used to track key performance indicators, visualize trends, and support business objectives. Dashboards are used across a wide range of industries and can be customized to suit any business need.

Excel is a powerful tool that is well-suited to creating dashboard reports. Through careful construction of database queries and formulas, it is possible to effectively organize and visualize your data in the format of a dashboard report. The benefits of using Excel for dashboard reporting include its familiarity, easy scalability, and low cost.

Benefits of Having a Customizable Dashboard in Excel

One of the most sought-after features of a modern-day spreadsheet application is the ability to create customized dashboards. By allowing you to tailor-make your reports, dashboards in Excel come with several exciting benefits.

Improved Productivity

By having a customizable dashboard, Excel users will be able to create comprehensive reports with the information they need. This eliminates the time spent on manual data entry and calculations, making it easier and faster to complete tasks and generate the desired results.

Furthermore, with the dashboard reports users can quickly access their most important information without having to search through multiple worksheets. This helps improve efficiency and reduce errors due to data duplication or incorrect calculations.

Cost Savings

Having customizable dashboard reports in Excel allows users to cut costs in many areas. For instance, they can save time they would have otherwise spent on manual entry or number-crunching, as the data is presented in a more understandable manner. Similarly, they can also save the software and hardware costs of installing and maintaining separate software for generating reports.

Easier Analysis

With customizable dashboard reports, users can easily compare data points and identify trends over a particular period. This helps them to better understand the data and reach informed decisions.

Moreover, having this capability also enables users to detect potential weaknesses, opportunities and threats quickly, allowing them to take corrective action and leverage their resources for maximum benefit.

Getting Started with Making a Customizable Dashboard in Excel

Creating a customized dashboard in Excel is relatively easy and can be done without any additional software. All you need to get started is the data that you want to include and the concepts that will help you with the design. Once you have all the pieces lined up, you will be able to easily create a dashboard that conveys the story you are trying to tell.

Gather Necessary Data

The first step in creating a customizable dashboard in Excel is gathering the data that you need. Depending on what type of dashboard you are creating, you may need sets of data from different sources. Make sure to do your research and collect all of the relevant data before you begin. It is also important to consider the format of the data you are collecting so that it can be easily imported into Excel.

Use Visual Basic for Applications in Excel to Create the Dashboard

After you have gathered all of the necessary data, you can use Excel’s own Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to create the dashboard. VBA is an automation tool that allows you to write small scripts to ‘command’ Excel to complete certain tasks. VBA is a great way to streamline the process of creating a dashboard in Excel as it allows you to quickly and easily manipulate the data to get the results you want.

Insert the Necessary Components

Once you have completed the VBA scripts, you can begin inserting the necessary components into your dashboard. In Excel, these components are referred to as “objects.” Objects can include charts, tables, and even images. You can also use formulas in Excel to generate custom calculations or to display the results of a predefined formula.

Design the Layout

The last step in creating a dashboard in Excel is designing the layout of the dashboard. You can use the various objects you inserted to create a cohesive look for your dashboard. You can experiment with different font sizes and colors to create an aesthetically pleasing layout. Additionally, you can add hyperlinks between different objects to make navigating the dashboard a breeze.

Setting Up Visual Basic for Applications in Excel

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language which is included as part of the Microsoft Office suite, is an invaluable tool for customizing Excel dashboard reports—if you know how to use it. With the ability to manipulate data and create charts and graphs in an automated way, it is possible to completely eliminate manual work such as cutting and pasting from considering dashboards when dealing with multiple sheets. Utilizing VBA can streamline the process of gathering data, making it easier to create accurate representations of your business’s progress.

Learn How to Create Charts and Graphs with Visual Basic

Charts and graphs are an integral part of visualizing data and providing meaningful insights, so understanding how to summarize the data with VBA is imperative. It is much easier to create the visuals within VBA, as opposed to putting it together outside of the program and then having to transfer the information. To create the visuals within VBA, it is necessary to input basic formulas in the cells and then use the formulas to dictate where the graphics should go.

Understand How to Manipulate Data in an Automated Way

VBA can automate a lot of the work associated with creating a dashboard report. By using the tools available, you can quickly and accurately make edits to data and have it instantly update throughout the entire report. This makes it much easier to adjust the sheet and make sure that the data is up to date and accurate. It is also possible to use VBA to make the sheet more interactive, allowing users to drill down and explore data in more detail.

Master the Programming Logs and Routines

When making reports in VBA, it is important to have a clear understanding of the programming logs and routines. Some tasks, such as linking sheets within VBA, require experience and knowledge of how to use the program. To get the most out of VBA, it is important to be familiar with the different functions and how to use them effectively.

• Develop a clear understanding of how the programming logs and routines work.
• Practice writing basic code in Visual Basic for Applications.
• Learn how to create visuals such as charts and graphs with VBA.
• Get hands-on experience manipulating data and creating automated reports.

Best Practices Tips for Creating a Customizable Dashboard in Excel

Creating customisable dashboard reports in Excel can be an effective way to quickly analyse data and gain a clear insight into complex processes. However, designing a successful dashboard requires time, planning and knowledge of best practices. Here are some tips to help you create a customisable dashboard that works best for you.

Utilize Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting is an Excel tool that enables you to highlight cells quickly and easily, in order to draw attention to key metrics. It also allows you to automatically colour code your data based on numeric values, so you can easily identify outliers and measure trends. Utilizing this tool can help you make your dashboard more meaningful and easier to understand.

Keep Update the Information Regularly

Dashboards must stay up-to-date and relevant to be effective. To ensure your dashboard is reflective of the most current conditions, it should be updated regularly. Additionally, automate certain processes in Excel as much as possible to save time and ensure accuracy of the data presented.

Use Appropriate Colors

One of the key elements to creating an effective dashboard is to use the appropriate colours to highlight important information and better analyse the data. Using the wrong colour scheme can make analysing your data more difficult and the dashboard more confusing. Consider the range of colours you are using and how they are providing context to your data. Additionally, you can use colour to differentiate data points and make the correlation between cells more evident.

Potential Drawbacks to Customizable Dashboard Reports in Excel

Dashboard reports in Excel offer an efficient way to quickly access data and gain insights about your business, but there are potential drawbacks that are important to consider. Here are some potential drawbacks when using Excel for creating customizable dashboard reports.

VBA Code Can Become Complicated

Creating a dashboard report in Excel from scratch involves writing “macros” written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). VBA is a powerful coding language that can be used to manipulate data, create visual elements, and make complex calculations. As the complexity of the dashboard report increases, VBA code can quickly become difficult to manage.

Security Can Be an Issue

When you store customer information in Excel, it’s important to make sure that your data is secure. If your dashboard is accessible over the internet, then there is an increased risk of data theft or data corruption. It may be necessary to create multiple security measures and layer your security to ensure that your data is safe.

It Takes Time to Implement

Creating a dashboard report in Excel from start to finish can take days, or even weeks. Depending on the complexity of your data, there can be quite a bit of work involved in creating charts, setting up formulas, writing VBA code, and testing the report to make sure it’s running correctly.

Conclusion

Creating custom dashboard reports in Excel can be an invaluable tool for businesses seeking to gather, organize and track data more efficiently. Not only does this process save project teams from spending countless hours managing data manually, it also enables users to quickly identify trends, forecast scenarios and build decision-making tools.

Summary of Benefits

Customizable dashboards can offer businesses a wide range of benefits, including:

• Reduce manual data entry and manipulation tasks
• More accurate, timely data delivery
• Effective data analysis
• Real-time data insights
• Enhanced visualization of results
• Easy customization

Importance of Careful Design and Execution

While configuring a dashboard in Excel is fairly straightforward, businesses should be aware that success depends upon careful design and execution. It is necessary to ensure accuracy of data and alignment of key performance indicators (KPIs) being tracked. Businesses should also ensure that dashboards are regularly updated to reflect new data, so that users can trust the information views in the dashboards.

Building a custom dashboard report in Excel can be a highly effective way for businesses to monitor and track performance. Not only can it save project teams from intensive manual data entry and manipulation tasks, it can also provide a visual reference for quickly assessing trends and making informed decisions.