% Change from previous month not calculated properly

[dreamer001]

I have percentage difference calculated from month to month. In the attached example, the change from Feb to March for the Digital Asset Management category goes from -548 to -628. It calculated the percentage change as 14.54% but that is wrong. Shouldn't that be -14.54% instead? Did I do something wrong when setting up the percentage difference?

[FDibbins]

If the change was to a bigger negative, then I think the % needs to ner neg as well. If it is pos, then the negative got smaller

[joeu2004]

In the attached example, the change from Feb to March for the Digital Asset Management category goes from -548 to -628. It calculated the percentage change as 14.54% but that is wrong. Shouldn't that be -14.54% instead?

Mathematically, no. But I understand why you would think so: you might think that movement to the left should be a percentage loss. That is how it works for positive numbers.

But mathematically, -548.77*(1+14.5416%) = -628.57 approximately. So +14.4516% is indeed correct, mathematically,

If you want Profit [sic] to be -14.5416%, I believe you need to change the Profit field to be a calculated field, with the formula: =(F8-D8)/ABS(D8). More reliably: =IFERROR((F8-D8)/ABS(D8),""). The result of the latter formula appears blank when D8 is zero. Alternatively, change "" to SIGN(F8). That displays 100% or -100% when D8 is zero and F8 is positive or negative respectively. Those alternatives are not mathematically correct; but they might appeal to your expectations.

Unfortunately, I don't know much about pivot tables. So I cannot tell you how to implement the calculated field.

[dreamer001]

That makes sense. Does anyone know how to create a custom formula within the pivot table? It won't allow me to insert new columns or modify the formulas of the cell values. Or is there a better way to approach this?