Creating Dashboard Reports in Excel

Introduction

Dashboard reports give an overview of key metrics and performance indicators related to an organization, project, or business. They provide a comprehensive view of a business's current performance, compared to historical or forecasted data. Dashboard reports are designed to be easy to understand and allow quick decision making based on the data presented.

Dashboard reports can be used to pinpoint areas for improvement, uncover risks and opportunities, make comparisons between different types of data, and track goals. By creating reports in Excel, businesses can visualize large data sets and draw important insights from the data.

Creating dashboard reports in Excel has many benefits. Excel is an easy-to-use software program that allows users to quickly input and analyze data. Dashboard reports created in Excel are interactive and can be customized to target specific audiences. Excel also offers powerful functions and formulas, allowing users to quickly create charts and graphs to make data more understandable.

What You'll Need

Creating a dashboard report takes more than just Microsoft Excel and a worksheet. To create the best dashboard report, you'll need the right tools and features that Excel offers. Let's review what you'll need to get started.

Microsoft Excel

A dashboard report created in Excel requires a version of Microsoft Excel to be installed on the computer. Excel is available as both a standalone product or part of the Office 365 suite. The version of Excel you use will determine the types of visualizations and analyses tools you can use.

Excel Worksheets

Excel worksheets provide the canvas for an Excel-based dashboard report. Each worksheet should contain only the data that is pertinent to the dashboard report. The data should be arranged in columns and rows with labels on the columns and rows that are easy to understand. It is important to format the data correctly to ensure the report is easy to read and understand.

Visualization and Analysis Tools

Excel offers a suite of visualization and analysis tools that can be used to create an interactive dashboard report. These tools include pivot tables, charts, and formulas that allow users to slice and dice data to provide a better understanding of the data. A combination of these tools can provide an easy-to-understand snapshot of key data points.

The use of these tools requires basic knowledge of how Excel works, but even with a basic understanding of the software you can create a robust dashboard report with the right combination of tools.

Setting up Your Dashboard

Creating dashboard reports in Excel involves a few steps from gathering the necessary data to analyzing it and deciding which elements to include in your dashboard. Below is an overview of how to go about setting up your dashboard.

How to Gather Necessary Data and Analyze It

The first step when setting up your dashboard is gathering and analyzing the necessary data. This data can come from internal sources such as a company’s databases or external sources such as third-party data providers. Once you have your data, it will be important to analyze it to determine why the data is important and identify any trends or patterns.

Choosing Which Elements to Include and How To Present Them

The next step is deciding which elements to include in your dashboard and how to present them. Depending on what type of dashboard you are creating and what the end-user will be looking for, there are a variety of elements that can be included, such as charts, graphs, tables, and more. It is important to be mindful of including only the necessary elements and making sure that they are easy to understand and interpret for the end-user.

Creating Relevant Charts, Graphs and Other Visuals

The final step in setting up your dashboard is creating relevant charts, graphs and other visuals. There are a wide variety of charts, graphs and other visuals that can be used to present data. When creating these visuals, it is important to ensure they are accurate and easy to interpret. Additionally, it is important to consider the size and type of data being presented and make sure the visuals reflect any trends or patterns in the data.

Tips for Effective Reports

Utilizing Customizable Templates

Creating dashboard reports in Excel requires thoughtful consideration of data sources, data points, organization, layout, accuracy, accessibility, and visual elements. Customizable templates allow for the ability to produce professional, presenting reports in virtually no time. Most customizable templates follow guidelines for efficient dashboard design to create interactive presentations and quickly convey insights from your data.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts to Speed Up the Process

Aside from utilizing customizable templates, many are not aware of the time-saving capabilities when it comes to creating reports in Excel. Basic shortcuts such as copy and paste, formatting, working with sorting and filtering, finding, or the built-in “Undo” command easily can be found with a few simple keyboard keystrokes.

For more experienced users, a more complete list of Excel shortcuts are available. These shortcuts can help create a report more quickly and efficiently, aiding in saving time and resources.

Knowing When to Use Which Type of Chart

Charts add a dynamic level of communication to a dashboard report, allowing users the ability to identify relationships, trends, and data distributions. If a report includes a meaningful amount of data points, the ideal way to improving the report ends up being to add charts of different types. But is necessary to be aware of when to use which type of chart or graph for the best representation.

By steering away from pie charts and towards more effective forms of data visualizations such as line graphs, scatter-plots, or bar graphs, the importance of each data point can be easily represented. A well grouped report should allow for minimal scrolling for the reader or viewer.

Working with Data Sources

Creating reports within Microsoft Excel often involves working with data from a range of different sources. Mastering the art of connecting to external data sources and linking tables allows for more efficient workflow and more accurate reporting. Understanding the capabilities for refreshing data helps to ensure reports are up to date. This chapter will explore the different ways in which data sources can be connected and linked, as well running through the options for keeping data up to date.

Connecting to External Data Sources

By far the most common approach to utilizing data within Excel is to connect to an external data source. The majority of users choose to connect to databases as these are often the source of structured data, while other options such as Access, text files or XML feeds can also be used. When connecting to databases, Microsoft Query can be used to provide data from a range of common database systems such as SQL, Oracle and MySQL. Once the connection is made, data is accessible from within Excel and can be manipulated in a variety of different ways.

Linking Tables Within the Same Document

Linking tables within the same Excel document is most commonly used when working with large volumes of data. By linking and referencing data between different worksheets, the document can be broken into manageable sections. For example, data can be formatted and structured in one worksheet and referenced from others. This helps to keep data organized while allowing other worksheets to remain highly customizable. For this reason, it is an ideal solution when the same data will be used in numerous documents.

Refreshing Data to Update Reports

To ensure data remains accurate, it needs to be regularly updated. If a report is based on data from an external source, Excel can be set to automatically refresh the data whenever the document is opened. This can be done manually by going to the ‘Data’ tab in Excel and selecting ‘Refresh Data’. It is also possible to set the data to automatically refresh on a regular basis. For example, data can be refreshed each time the document is opened, or at specific times or intervals.

Creating an Interactive Dashboard

Excel is a powerful program for creating dashboard reports to distill large amounts of data into meaningful and easy to understand visuals. Excel is used across the globe for data analysis, dashboards, and reporting. Creating an interactive dashboard in Excel requires an understanding of how the program works, as well as how to leverage some of its built-in features. This article will provide an overview of how to create an interactive dashboard in Excel.

Using conditional formatting

Conditional formatting is a feature within Excel that allows you to change the appearance of data or ranges of cells based on their value. This is particularly useful when creating interactive dashboards, as it allows you to highlight key information or trends within the data. For example, you could highlight cells that contain a certain value, or color code a range of cells based on their value. This makes the data easier to interpret and more eye-catching for users.

Leveraging interactive dashboards

In addition to using conditional formatting, you can also leverage the built-in interactive dashboards feature in Excel. This feature allows you to quickly create charts and graphs that visualize data in an easy to understand way. You can customize these dashboards to filter and display only the data that is relevant to the story you are trying to tell, making them highly effective for presenting complex data in an easy to understand manner.

Leveraging web applications to enhance reporting

Finally, you can also use web-based applications to enhance the reporting capabilities in Excel. These applications allow you to create sophisticated visualizations, such as heat maps, geographic maps, and other custom visualizations. This can be particularly helpful when creating interactive dashboards, as it allows you to quickly create visuals that are tailored to the data you are presenting. You can also quickly update these visuals as the data changes, making them a powerful tool for keeping up with the quickly changing data.

Conclusion

Now that we have gone through the process of creating dashboard reports in Excel, we can now summarize the key steps and tips to make the most out of your dashboard reports.

Summary of Key Steps and Tips

• Start by defining the purpose of the dashboard and the data you need to fulfill it
• Design and layout is critical, so spend some time making an intuitive dashboard
• Consider adding user interactivity to elements such as charts and filters
• Carefully consider the data sources and connection type to keep reports always up-to-date
• Continuously review and refine the dashboard to ensure that it remains useful and relevant

Benefits of Creating Dashboard Reports in Excel

Creating dashboard reports in Excel can provide a number of tangible benefits to the user.

• Dashboard reporting can be easy to understand and interpret, even if the user does not have a deep knowledge of data analysis
• It allows the user to analyze and visualize data in real-time, so the user can stay up-to-date and make quick decisions
• Using a customized dashboard can help to make all data sources work together, so the user can quickly compare different datasets and draw unique insights
• User interactivity can help the user to dive deeper into the data, exploring different correlations to gain valuable business intelligence

Overall, creating dashboard reports in Excel is a straightforward process if done correctly, and it can provide effective, timely, and actionable insights to the user.