Sheet2ChartFinance views that stay tied to the source file
Who: Finance teams and operators
Problem: Someone asks about a variance, and answering means manual pivots over the budget or actuals file.
Outcome: Fast variance exploration with calculations you can check against the uploaded data.
- Upload a budget or actuals export.
- Inspect KPI and category charts.
- Ask a variance question and read the receipt showing how it was calculated.
What the export usually looks like
Most finance questions start from one of two files: a budget-versus-actual table, or a cash-flow ledger. The first is the more common:
| Column | Used for |
|---|---|
| Period | Trend by month or quarter, period filters |
| Category | Variance by line, category filters |
| Cost centre | Who owns the variance |
| Budget | The plan |
| Actual | What happened |
One row per category per period, with budget and actual side by side, is the shape that makes every variance question answerable. The finance dashboard in Excel guide explains why this one join matters more than any chart.
The numbers the dashboard shows first
From that table Sheet2Chart typically proposes:
- Total actual against total budget for the period, with the variance and variance percentage.
- Variance by category, ranked so the largest overspend and the largest underspend are visible without scrolling.
- Actual by period as a trend, so a variance can be read as a one-off or a pattern.
- For a cash-flow file, inflows, outflows, and ending balance by period.
A question you can ask, and what the receipt shows
“Why is marketing over budget in Q3?” becomes:
- Measure: Actual, summed, minus Budget, summed
- Filter: Category = Marketing, Period in Q3
- Grouped by: Cost centre, showing the largest variance
The receipt makes the definition explicit, which is exactly the conversation a finance review usually spends its first ten minutes on. If the file has no cost-centre column, the answer says so and offers the grouping it can do.
When Excel is enough, and when to upload
Excel is the right tool when one person owns the budget table and refreshes it each close. The guide above covers the variance formula, a waterfall chart for cash flow, and slicers for period and category.
Upload the file when several stakeholders want to query variance themselves, when a new export lands mid-quarter, or when the question is “show me the number and how you got it” rather than “send me the workbook”.
Frequently asked questions
Are answers calculated from my data?
Yes. Answers are read-only calculations over the uploaded file. Nothing in the spreadsheet is changed, and every answer shows the measure, grouping, and filters used to reach it.
Should budget and actuals be in the same file?
Yes, ideally as two columns in one table with a row per category per period. That lets the dashboard compute variance per row. Two separate files cannot be compared in one dashboard today.
How is variance calculated?
Variance = Actual − Budget, and Variance % = (Actual − Budget) ÷ Budget. The receipt on any variance answer names both columns and the rows that were included, so the sign convention is never ambiguous.
Can I look at a single cost centre or quarter?
Yes. Category, cost centre, and period columns all become filters, and a filter narrows every KPI and chart together. A question you ask uses the same filters unless you run it across all data.
Can I show the result to the leadership team?
Share a link so they see the same numbers and receipts, or export the dashboard when the period is closed. Sharing is a switch you flip; nothing is public by default.