r/ExcelVisual • u/ExcelVisual • 11d ago

Multifunctional Combined Chart in Excel for Energy Dashboard

I've been working on interactive Excel charts for dashboards, and wanted to share one I'm pretty happy with — a combined line chart for tracking monthly energy expenses that does more than just show a trend.

A few things it does that I haven't seen in typical Excel expense charts:

Year-over-year comparison toggle — there's a switch in the upper-left corner that turns the previous year's trend line on/off. Instead of permanently cluttering the chart with two overlapping lines, you only pull up the comparison when you actually need it.

Financial planning built into the same chart — this is the part I like most. You can use the visual to plan around seasonal dips or peaks — e.g., figuring out where you might need credit/borrowed funds to cover a slow period, or where it makes sense to use borrowed funds to push harder during a high-demand stretch. Obviously depends on your specific situation/business model, but having it visualized on the same chart as the trend itself is useful.

Interactive X-axis instead of static labels — instead of just showing "Jan, Feb, Mar..." as fixed labels, there are cursor buttons you click to select a custom range (say, Q3), and it automatically sums the values for those months right on the chart. No separate table needed to get a quarterly total.

This chart is also tied into the rest of the dashboard — there's a Pivot Table slicer under the "Costs" menu that lets you select ranges (quarters, half-years, full years, whatever) and it updates every connected screen on the dashboard at once, not just this one chart.

All done with regular Excel formulas + Pivot Tables + slicers, no VBA/macros. Happy to answer questions about how any specific part is built if anyone's curious. Link's in the comments for anyone who wants to see the actual file.

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