How to Set Up a Dashboard in Excel
How to Prepare Dashboard in Excel: If you should take a step back and look 50-60 years in the past. It was a pretty tedious job to create and managing data records, creating forms, structuring forecast graphs etc. These jobs were very time consuming. Overtime though through the advancement of new technologies which really made our lives easier.
We now have a lot of tools we can use that can help us do all those task and more. One of those well-known tools that are still looked upon as revolutionary is called Microsoft Excel.
It is a software tool you can use to insert and analyze massive amounts of data, manage your business budget, data records, create graphing tools, make complex business calculations and many more…
Despite the fact that it can be a very useful tool that we can use in our everyday lives. It will take a while for you to get used to because it can get a bit confusing at times.
If you are serious about leveraging this tool it’s all up to your dedication to master it. You have a lot of persons who master it in 6 months while for some it may take 2 years. In this blog as the title states you are going to get a walkthrough on how to prepare your dashboard in excel.
The dashboard is one of the reasons it’s so popular and it’s an important feature in Excel. What is a dashboard?
In excel a dashboard will give you a graphical view into the necessary information that are going to be useful to your organization. This information can then be analyzed and help you make critical decisions.
As a manager it can help you get a bird’s eye overview of your different business processes. These data can then be analyzed by you and your team to see how healthy your business is and if everything is working in order. It can also allow you to clearly communicate important business information when making presentations in meetings.
You can create a lot of different types of dashboard for any part of your business. It’s all up to your business and what you are looking for. Some of these would include, sales dashboard, customer service dashboard etc. you can even create key performance indicator dashboards which is pretty awesome. Below is a walkthrough you can do on creating a dashboard for your company.
How to Prepare Dashboard in Excel: Walkthrough on How to Create your Excel Dashboard
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Step 1
You got to upload or insert the information you would like to use in the excel spreadsheet. Take in mind when you’re naming the spreadsheet, don’t use any spaces or characters. What you can do is use the “_” symbol where the space or character was going to be.
Step 2
Create an outline of how you want your dashboard to look. This will depend on the different types of data you are using. You can find outlines on the internet to get inspiration.
Step 3
Create the formulas that will then turn your data into charts. The formulas usually depend on what you are planning to chart and the arrangement of the charts. You can find sites that have a lot of formulas that can help you in doing this.
Step 4
To create your dashboard you can use tools such as formatting, objects and graphs, controls etc. If you want to do this you can select “Menu”, then go to “view”, you are going to then select “Tool Bars”.
For beginners you can create your dashboard using only excel tools. If you are a black belt user of excel and you know how to use other softwares from other companies who have tools that you can download. Go ahead because a lot of persons have used that method to make up their dashboards set up amazing.
Step 5
You are then going to update your information.
Step 6
If you are using a different dashboard software tool you will need to upload your data on a spreadsheet.
Step 7
Install your dashboard program.
Step 8
Import the data from the database into that software.
Step 9
Lastly open the file into the dashboard software. You can then get the freedom to choose whatever tools you want to create a dashboard.
This is just one of many ways you can use to create a dashboard. This seems to be one of the easiest ways as well. You can find a lot of information on the web on how you can do this. You will also find a lot of the other amazing templates which can benefit your business.
Over all the excel dashboard is a very useful tool you can use to visualize useful business data. Furthermore you could analyze the data to see how efficiently certain business processes are operating. This can help you spot areas of strength and weaknesses within your business.