Thread: How to chart?

I use Excel to report on sales of promotional items. At the bottom of the report I have a pie chart which compares Sales $ to Shortfall $ (calculated by deducting Sales $ from Budget $). For example, one store may have a budget of $100,000, has sold $90,000, therefore has Shortfall $ of $10,000 or 10%.

My problem arises when a store sells more than their budget, because the pie chart no longer reports the correct values. If the store has a budget of $100,000 and sells $110,000, they have achieved 110% of budget, but the pie chart shows a negative percentage as the shortfall.

Is there any graphic representation I can use to display the actual percentage sold against budget, even when the sales are greater than 100%?

Thanks in anticipation.

Trish

Thanks for your suggestion, Nicky. I ended up using an area chart with a brightly coloured graphic arrow pointing to the budget figure. That way the sales grow each week and some stores' sales display above the budget line.

Originally Posted by Nicky

why use a pie chart - pies are most usefull for showing the composition of things (eg the % of sales from each store). Using a simple column chart night be better for the purposes you describe