how to make a pie chart in excel for budget

When working with data within Excel, it’s important that each piece of information lives within its own cell.

So, your best bet is to research how to import your specific data format. There are numerous ways to do this with ranging complexities-depending on where your data exists currently. If it’s already there? Great-there’s nothing more you need to do with this step.īut, if not? You’ll need to import it into an Excel workbook. In order to create a dashboard, your data first needs to exist in Excel. Here are a few things you’ll want to do before getting started on a dashboard: 1. However, before doing so, it’s essential that you lay the appropriate groundwork first. Before building the Dashboard: what you should knowĭata visualization sounds like a real party, doesn’t it? We can tell that you’re ready and raring to get started building your own dashboards. But, Excel has tons of capabilities to create as complex of a dashboard as you require. This example is relatively straightforward. Into this quick pie chart that shares a breakdown of where money was spent during January:

Needless to say, dashboards have a wide array of uses-from budgeting or project management to marketing or sales reporting.įor a simple example, I used a dashboard to transform this spreadsheet of first quarter expenses: They turn data into information (yes, those are two different things!) by creating different charts, tables, and other visual elements that give you a high-level overview of that data.Ī dashboard simplifies that otherwise complex data you have in your spreadsheet and transforms it into something visual that’s far easier for you to grasp and, thus, utilize.

But, all of those rows and columns are often impossible to process and understand. The simplest way to think of a dashboard is as a visual representation of data.

How to make a pie chart in excel for budget