The Expenses dashboard is another four-quadrant dashboard with a Pivot Table on the upper right-hand side, surrounded by three graphs analyzing essentially the same data in different formats. The pivot table is organized by the Cost Center group and reports in thousands, as the title clearly states. It is well-organized with fairly standard income-expense statement section type columns. Therefore, we can see the 2011 expenses as compared to the budget and the previous year, with the variance in both dollars and percentages. The unfavorable variances are the positive numbers shown in red; those columns must be formatted in Properties so that the text for those numbers is set to red when the value is greater than zero. This is just the opposite of the setting used in the previous chapter covering the Order Details tab. My preference would be to only have the pivot table and to have more detailed information loaded so that we can drill-down on the expense detail to a much greater level than just the general accounting line.

The pie chart in the lower left-hand corner is tied to the line chart on its immediate right. You will have to decide for yourself if the screen real estate used by the pie chart is valuable to you. The sheet objects are linked but, once we go down below the initial level of the pie chart, the line graph no longer displays data. The General Costs break into so many wedges that the key for the pie chart (with the percentage displayed next to it) is more useful informationally than the chart itself. If we had a greater level of detail loaded, the pie chart could become useful as a navigational device to get to the Cost Center and Account line that we might want to drill-down on.

When we examine the bar chart in the upper left-hand quadrant of the sheet, and begin clicking through the fiscal years in the selection list box, we can see that the deeper royal blue is associated with the year selected. The light turquoise blue bars are associated with the previous year. And when we get to the year 2011, the orange Budget line appears.

It is difficult to tell what the blue and orange lines in the line chart on the lower right-hand side represent, because we have used the same colors in all the three graphics. Are all the orange colors related? Does the royal blue represent the same thing in every graph? In this particular case, the answer is no. In the upper left graphic on the upper-left side, the royal blue is the current year, and orange represents the budget. In the pie chart, the royal blue represents the highest percentage, and the orange is used for the third-highest percentage. In the lower-right side, we are not even sure what the two lines represent since the only label is, 2010 Expen… Trend. We can see the percentages on the left and the months across the bottom. We can also see the lines change when we change the years with Filter by Year, but we cannot tell which one of the lines is the Expense percentage and which one of the line represents the trend.

Figure 9-1: Expenses tab from CFO example dashboard

In the next section, we will investigate what the lines in the Expenses as % Sales line chart represent and whether our assumption about the text formatting for the pivot table is true, along with other formatting features. We will also reformat our line graph to provide easier understanding. We will set the pie chart such that it can be minimized or maximized, and we will create a link in our pivot table.