Introducing the Power
Of Year-Over-Year
Performance Charts in Excel

The purpose of management reports should be to help readers find and track patterns of performance…quickly and easily.

That’s the attraction of charts, of course. But should we always plot the raw data? Or should we ever transform it somehow? To see one type of transformation that’s often revealing, take a look at these two figures...

The US Economic Overview
Excel Dashboard Report

This new Excel dashboard should interest you in several ways:

 If your business relies on the health of the US economy, this dashboard provides insights you probably won't find elsewhere.

If you need to distribute your dashboards electronically, the linked page illustrates two techniques to consider.

And if you use Excel dashboards now, this dashboard illustrates some of the ways you can expand it to meet your information needs.

Click the link to get a closer look at our new US Economic Overview Excel dashboard.

How to Help Readers Interpret
Chart Trends Correctly, Using
High-Quality, Dynamic Text

In a chart of business performance, an upward-sloping line could indicate good news or bad.

If the chart shows profits or sales, an upward-sloping line is good news. But if the chart shows expenses or measures about problem areas, an upward-sloping line, or a rising series of column plots, shows us bad news.

The Wall Street Journal uses indicators like the ones shown here. And you can add similar indicators to your own chart figures…if you know three tips.

See Our Free Recorded Webinars

Charley Kyd recently started to give free webinars about his Excel dashboard products. Honestly, giving webinars is a new experience for him, so he won't win any Emmy Awards. But even so, the webinars offer some good information. You'll find them here:

• IncSight DB

• IncSight QnE

• Questions and Answers from both webinars

A Free Offer to Help Excel Users
Improve Your Job Prospects

Are you looking for a job? Or are you concerned you might need to look for one soon? We'd like to help.

Post samples of your Excel dashboard reports at ExcelUser.com, along with your employment and contact information…for free.

How to Use Excel Dashboards
To Encourage Urgent Change

Many companies find ways to thrive in recessions. These well-run companies find ways to adapt; they change quickly; and they grow.

But in too many companies, change crawls along at a snail's pace. Harvard's John P. Kotter explains how to encourage A Sense of Urgency for changing your organization's performance.

And Excel plays a critical role.

Standard Reports or Dashboards?
Which Offers Greater Insight?

The purpose of any Excel report is to give its readers the most-useful information in the shortest-possible reading time.

Which type of report is best? Standard Excel reports certainly are the most widely used. But Excel dashboards have gained a lot of supporters. Compare two reports of the same data and decide for yourself.

Kindle DX: A New Era
For Excel Reporting?

Amazon.com says their new Kindle DX is great for reading newspapers, textbooks, and other commercial publications. But the DX also could offer Excel users a huge advantage.

Will Kindle DX transform how Excel users deliver Excel reports and other types of management information?

New! Plug-N-Play Excel Dashboard
Reports Linked to an Excel Database

This is the most powerful Excel dashboard report we've ever offered. And you can show off your own data with it in a few hours.

IncSight DB includes 20 dashboard report workbooks all linked to an Excel database. Update your database and then print your reports. Choose from 20 new color schemes, or use your favorite color scheme from IncSight PNP.

IncSight DB also can automatically synchronize the Y axes of any charts you specify. It can auto-scale your Y-axis labels, displaying "Thousands", "Millions", etc., as appropriate. It let's you switch currencies easily, lets you change labels like "Billion" to "Thousand Million" quickly.

Follow the link to learn more about IncSight DB.

How to Create Cycle Plots in Excel
To Chart Seasonal Sales Data

This chart displays eleven years of seasonal data in new way. It's called a Cycle Plot.

Here, the chart shows the trend for all sales in each of the twelve months. The green horizontal line shows the average sales for each month.

We show you how to create Cycle Plots of your own data.

The First Dashboard
Used in Spreadsheets

This figure shows two graphs from the first spreadsheet dashboard report, created using Lotus 1-2-3 in 1984. Each line of the charts consists of text in cells. We offer more examples of this report and offer a brief description of how it was created.

Review Our Growing Collection
Of Excel Dashboard Reports

Many people -- accustomed to standard Excel reports -- doubt that Excel can generate great looking reports. These sample Excel dashboards might change your mind.

Pablum Dashboards

Is your company spending many thousands of dollars for business dashboards that serve up your performance measures like pablum?

There's an excellent chance that you are. We provide several examples for your consideration.

Learn to Show Business Data
That Readers Can Understand

Only a few books explain general reporting techniques that can help readers understand business data more easily. We examine several recent books that offer excellent advice about ways to present your business data more clearly.

Compare Metrics by Category
Using Excel Dot Plot Charts

Management reports often must compare measures of performance by some type of category. Excel dot plots provide an excellent way to display this information clearly. We explain how you can bring dot plots to your own reports.

Charts & Cash Flow

You can use Excel to create great-looking magazine-quality reports. But can dashboards improve your bottom line?

Small Charts

We use real data in Excel to explain the benefits of using small charts for reporting.

Down With Gauges!

Using dashboard gauges for reporting typically is a mistake. We explain why, and show how Excel charts provide a more effective solution.

Dash Gallery

Most Excel don't know the power Excel offers for making dashboards. Here's a gallery of dashboard examples.

Why Dashboards?

Excel is an excellent tool for dashboard reporting. But why should your company use dashboards in the first place?

Sample Reports

Check here to see a growing list of charts, tables, and dashboard reports.