This file contains magazine-quality charts in Excel to illustrate variances between budgeted and actual figures.

Professionally designed charts in business documents and presentations immediately grab readers’ attention. They make readers go through your materials more thoroughly. And they are certainly a great tool to present data and draw conclusions.

The charts included in this publication are:

1. Monthly sales: budget vs. actual (total and variances)
2. Key financial metrics mini-dashboard (budget-actual-prior year)
3. Sales growth rates by product (budget-actual-prior year)
4. KPI dashboard (different kinds of indicators with the different magnitude on the same chart)
5. Charts showing budget-to-actual changes in volumes, prices, and mixes by product
6. Charts showing budget-to-actual changes in volumes, prices, and mixes by product
7. A column chart showing three dimensions of data

The charts are quite flexible to updates and modifications. You can replace products with e.g. departments or geographic regions. Instead of budgets and actuals, you can apply them to reporting periods or model scenarios. Revenues, profits, etc. can be changed to any other indicators.

All charts have comments concerning the type of charts used, series, axes, key formatting information. The most complex charts are accompanied by detailed instructions on how to create them from scratch.