Budget vs Actual chart

“Actually an ordinary story, like Cinderella”… these are the words of an old hit from the ’80s, and they came to my mind as an illustration of what I want to describe in this text: a comparison chart of budgeted vs actual. If we use the display of data on the secondary axis, we can easily compare planned and realized values, which can be important for displaying intuitive reports.

We start from the table in which we observe the variance analysis in four quarters of one business year. We’ll create a simple Column Chart, add a title, format the y-axis to show values ​​in the thousands…

Let’s change the chart type to Combo. We will show the budgeted values ​​using lines with markers, and let the actual values ​​remain as bars. If we then select a series of budgeted values, set the line to be transparent, and increase the width of the marker, we will get a chart on which the budgeted values ​​are shown in circles and the actual values ​​in bars. Convenient, isn’t it?