Using Excel as a Management Reporting Tool with your Minotaur Data. Exercise 1 Customer Item Profitability Reporting Tool for Management

Transcription

1 Using Excel as a Management Reporting Tool with your Minotaur Data with Judith Kirkness These instruction sheets will help you learn: 1. How to export reports from Minotaur to Excel (these instructions are for Excel 2010 but Excel 2013 is very similar) 2. How to take basic Minotaur data reports and create PivotTables and PivotCharts to examine your data in a variety of ways including creating powerful new management reports 3. How to update a PivotTable with new data and use the PivotTable as a data mining tool 4. How to choose the right Minotaur report for easy pivoting Exercise 1 Customer Item Profitability Reporting Tool for Management A look at Customers, Items Sold, and our profitability on those items and customers We are going to show you a sample of a finished PivotTable and then we ll all follow the steps outlined below so you can create and learn the process for how we got here. 1. Click your button to get to Minotaur Customer Item Profitability Report (DSCI). Notice that the top left corner of the screen shows you which menu path you used to reach this point in the system. This report can be found under different screen paths in different customer systems. Talk to your Project Manager if you can t find this report. 2. This is typical of a Minotaur report entry screen, with lots of check boxes and filter options. 3. The most important check box for easy pivoting is the unformatted output box. Check that field. 4. Set the date range you want included. 5. Keep the Select Detail Amount to its default - Full 6. Run the report. 7. The first filter screen that appears is the Customer filter screen, we are going to run this report for all customers and all salesmen so we are just going to say OK to this filter screen. 8. The next filter screen that appears is the Item filter screen, we are going to run this report for all items in our database, so again, say OK to this filter screen. 1 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

2 9. There is now the new question that comes up asking if you want your output to include Titles/Totals and Filter Selections? Select No, so you get just the data with the column headings. (if you don t get this question, Titles/Totals and Filter Selections will show on the report output and can be deleted in Excel, we provide instructions for this later in the notes). 10. Your Minotaur report should appear on screen. Note that this version of the DSCI report has been optimized for transfer to Excel. 11. Notice the two levels of report output options at the bottom of each Minotaur report. 12. Press the Excel button on the report output screen. This launches Excel and parses the data into columns and records. NOTE: In order for the Excel button (or the Make PDF button) to work from Minotaur, you may need your IT person (or ask Al) to direct the Minotaur system where to look on your computer or your company server for the relevant program (Excel or a pdf creator). If your buttons don t work at your office, look under Minotaur menu path HS Help, System Data and set up the required paths. This should only be necessary if you are using Excel 2003 or earlier versions. Later versions are generally recognized by your Minotaur program automatically. 13. Excel 2007 and newer use.xlsx file extensions vs. Excel 2003 and older use.xls file extension 14. Let s save this basic report before we begin manipulating it. Use the Save As (Alt-F+A) feature. It is important to save the file as an Excel Workbook file with a.xls or.xlsx file extension, not as a.txt file, which is the default when data flows from Minotaur or other outside systems. Click File, Save As and call the file something meaningful like: CUST ITEM PROF [date range].xlsx Use the drop down box to select.xlsx the top option of file type choices Click Save 15. When Excel parses data, it puts every column to a width setting of 8 characters. If a number is one of the columns and there are more than 8 characters, it will fill in the viewing screen with ########. 2 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

3 To adjust the column widths so you can see you data more clearly, highlight all the columns along the row that says A, B, C etc. and move your mouse into that top column bar (A B C) until the two sided arrow appears, then double click. If you have the older version of the Customer Item Profitability Report in your Minotaur system follow the instructions in Appendix A before returning to this spot as additional format preparation is needed before pivoting. Unless you have a customization, the new version will arrive with your next update. 16. Now you are ready to pivot this report. Position your cursor on the upper left square of your worksheet, cell A1 It should say Cust Code. 17. Go to the Insert Ribbon and drop down on PivotTable, selecting PivotChart. This will create both a PivotTable and PivotChart. Excel 2010 will automatically highlight the entire range of data starting from A1 (the position your cursor was in) and across to the first blank column and down to the first blank row and bring up the PivotTable window you see here: This is important to remember if you insert updated data in the future, you will want to expand this range to reflect it in your PivotTable and PivotChart with the refresh function. Note that you can insert your PivotTable into your existing worksheet or a new tab on your worksheet. Accept the default of placing the PivotTable in a New Worksheet in this same file and press OK. 18. Notice down at the bottom that Excel has now added a new worksheet tab to your document. You can click back and forth between the tabs and notice your data is contained on the one tab and your PivotTable worksheet is on the other. 19. Save your file again. Click File, Save. Then click the tab that contains your PivotTable and PivotChart. 20. Notice also that when you click outside the PivotTable the PivotTable Field List menu disappears. When you click inside the PivotTable, it appears again. Click on the PivotTable frame. When you are in a PivotTable, two new menu sections appear on the ribbon to the right under PivotTable Tools, Options and Design Now click on the PivotChart frame. When you click inside the PivotChart, four new menu sections appear on the ribbon to the right under PivotChart Tools, Design, Layout, Format and Analyze. Also, note that the Column Labels changes to Legend Fields in the bottom right as a chart doesn t have columns. 3 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

4 Let s move the PivotChart out of the way by dragging it below the PivotTable. We will work with the chart a bit later. 21. Click back to the PivotTable and check the Customer Name field box in the PivotTable panel on the right side of your screen. Note that the Customer Names populate into the left PivotTable column. 22. While we can choose a number of ways to look at this data, let s first look at our Sales by month across the top as columns. To create this structure, Click the Date field. Note the default is to add this field as a subheading to the left hand Column layout. To see the dates as columns, we need to position our mouse on the date field in the right panel and drag it into the Column Labels section at the bottom of the PivotTable Field List. See now that all the individual dates of invoices for these Customers have become columns across the top of your report. We will change those columns to summarize by month in a few moments. 23. First, let s get some data into this PivotTable so we can better see what we are working with. We need to populate the values section (the middle of the PivotTable) with a relevant field of information. Our options from this Minotaur report include the following fields: Quantity Price Amount (which represents quantity x price before taxes) Cost Profit Margin Let s start by checking the Amount box. If the Amounts don t appear in the middle of your PivotTable, drag the Amount field to the Values section of the bottom right PivotTable Field List. Now numbers will appear in the body of your report. 24. There are several options for how your numbers can appear in the body of the PivotTable. It is important to know what the numbers mean to be sure it reflects what you want to view. The upper left corner of the PivotTable should say Sum of Amount. If the upper left corner of your PivotTable says Count of Amount it is showing total Count of invoices for that customer for each date in data. The individual dates of each invoice are across as columns. We will learn how to summarize these columns by week, month or quarter in a moment. To see the values (the invoice amount), click the right arrow next to Count of Amount in the PivotTable Field List Values quadrant and change it to Sum of Amount. Notice you could select Count, Average, Max, Min etc. 4 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

5 You may prefer to see this data summarized by week, month or quarter. To summarize by month, place your cursor on any date column heading in the PivotTable. Right click and select Group. The Group menu you see here will appear with the start and end dates reflecting data from your table. Ensure Months is highlighted and press OK. The report columns will now be summarized by month. 25. Now perhaps you d like to get rid of the decimals. Use your mouse or the arrows to highlight the entire values section including the total section. Right click and choose Format Cells. Select Number and indicate 0 decimals. There is good reason not to choose Currency format unless Currency values are all you wish to look at with this PivotTable. We ll see why shortly. 26. Let s experiment with what other information we can look at besides Total Sales by Month. Click within the PivotTable to see the PivotTable Field List box. Uncheck the Amount field and then check the Profit field. If the profit numbers don t appear in the body of your PivotTable, drag the selection into the Values section on the Field List. Look to see if the upper left hand side of the table says Sum of Profit. If the table is showing you Count of Profit, change it to Sum of Profit. Now our table shows the profit on each customer over the six months displayed. Uncheck the Profit field and instead check Quantity. If the Quantity information does not appear in the body of the table, drag the selection into the Values section if the information does not appear as you want it. Look to see if the table is showing you Count of Quantity and if so, change it to Sum of Quantity. Now our table will show the total quantity of items purchased by each customer, which is not a dollar Currency value. It is simply a number. This information may not be very useful but helps you understand why you don t want to make the default format set to currency. The quantity you see now does not represent a dollar value. Uncheck Quantity and recheck Amount. If necessary, drag the selection into the Values section if the information does not appear as you want it and make sure it is set to Sum of Amount. 27. Click on PivotTable Tools Design tab in the top ribbon. 5 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

6 You can select a colourful design for your PivotTable and choose banded rows or columns to be able to read the table better. Experiment with design choices to find one you like. 28. You can also turn off Grand Totals for Columns or for Rows. To do so you go to PivotTable Tools, Options and then there is a second submenu called Options as well (left side under PivotTable name). Turn them back on before we continue. 29. Another great feature is the ability to remove data that is less relevant for your analysis. For example, maybe you d like to look at the sales to your top 5 customers. Click inside your PivotTable. To limit the data in your rows (basically hide some customers), click the down arrow next to Row Labels. Go to Value Filters, and then select Top 10 (it will give you the option to choose how many top to view and we don t have 10 customers set up in our sample data so change that number to 5) Note that you can filter either by Labels (ie. show me only customers that have Loblaw in the name) or by Values, ie. only customers >$1,000 or my top 20 customers, for example. Notice that the PivotTable is now showing us the top five customers for that time period. Let s remove that filter so we have all the data to work with in our PivotChart. To undo your last step press CTRL-Z or click the down arrow next to Row Labels again, select Value Filters and Clear Filters. 30. Finally, let s take a look at our PivotChart which is attempting to display this information visually. The Chart is showing each month across the bottom and a bar representing each customers total sales for that month. This is quite a busy graph. But it is good for using to visually analyse data. Use the Customer Name filter in the PivotChart to restrict the information to just one customer This is the value of PivotTables and PivotCharts, you can slice and dice the information for analysing without rerunning reports and without needing to know Minotaur. Note however that the data is only accurate as of the date and time the report was pulled from the system. This is in contrast to a dashboard, like Minotaur s dashboard, which can show you current key performance indicators in chart or data format based on when the dashboard was last sent data from your Minotaur system typically every 10 minutes. Working with the new PivotChart Tools options that appear on your ribbon when you are on the PivotChart, you can format this chart with a title, change the names under the axis and otherwise get it presentation ready if you want. 6 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

7 This is the perfect tool to give to a sales manager. You can lock the tab that contains the original data with a password if you wish to ensure no one you give it to can change the source data. Then, the Sales Manager or owner can slice, dice and examine the data in a variety of ways. You may prefer to see the same information expressed as a different style Chart. Let s switch it to a Pie Chart. Click on PivotChart Tools, Design, Change Chart Type and select Pie and press OK. Notice that the Chart changes to show you each customer sales as a slice of the pie as compared to the total for that time period. Notice that the chart title says Jan. Using the drop down date menu within the chart you can choose to look at each month separately. If you want the chart to include the totals for the six months (all the data we have in the PivotTable), we must first group the data into one column. You can achieve this by grouping it by year. Be aware that we currently only have data for the first 6 months of the year but that is the method to get all the data into one column. I find the legend hard to read. I prefer to see the names closer to their pie segments. To see a different Legend View, click on the PivotChart Tools Design Tab and select the left most Chart Layout on the Chart ribbon at the top of your screen. You should see something like the following: Note that you can move your chart and titles around and increase the size of the chart so the labels are easier to read. This chart can be printed on its own page and is very presentation ready. 28. Save this file. Congratulations, you just learned the basics of creating PivotTables and PivotCharts! 7 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

8 Exercise 2 Revise Data without Redoing your PivotTable When you get your PivotTable working well, the last thing you want to do is have to start over the next day because your data set has changed (due to edits) or has increased (due to new entries). This exercise will show you how to use your existing file with a new data set. 1. Ensure the file you worked on in the first part of this class is open in Excel. 2. Click to return to the Minotaur Main Menu. Click on the DSCI button again. 3. The most important check box for easy pivoting is the unformatted output box. Check that field. 4. Extend the date range beyond your original dates. 5. Ensure the detail level remains at F for Full and Run the report. 6. The first filter screen that appears is the Customer filter screen, we are going to run this report for all customers and all salesmen so we are just going to say OK to this filter screen. 7. The next filter screen that appears is the Item filter screen, we are going to run this report for all items in our database, so again, say OK to this filter screen. 8. Click No to Include Titles/Totals and Filter Selections prompt. 9. The DSCI report with the extra data will appear on screen. 10. Press the Excel button on the report output screen. This launches Excel and parses the data into columns and records. 11. Ensure your CUST ITEM PROF file is open. Go to that file and delete everything that you see in the tab which contains your Minotaur data. The fastest way is to click on the little square at the top left corner of the worksheet, which will highlight everything, then press delete. 8 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

9 12. Hop back to the worksheet with the new report output that includes the additional data. Press the arrow in the upper left to highlight the data including column headings at the top and right click and press Copy to place it in the buffer (or type Ctrl-C). 13. Switch documents to your previous PivotTable document. 14. Place your cursor in cell A1, right click and press Paste (or type Ctrl-V). 15. Be sure to Save As a new filename such as CUST ITEM PROF [extended date range].xlsx to not overwrite your previous worksheet. Scroll down to note the number of the last row in the new data set. 16. Switch tabs to your PivotTable tab. Notice the information contained has not changed yet. 17. Click within the PivotTable and Select PivotTable Tools, Options, Change Data Source and change the row number to the new final row. 18. The values in the PivotTable will change to include the most recent three months. Note that if you had hard coded titles into your PivotTable you will need to adjust your titles. You have just learned how to revise your PivotTables based on new information. 9 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

10 Exercise 3 How to choose the right Minotaur report to get what you want Let s assume you want to negotiate better rates from a Supplier and you have requested a meeting with your supplier account manager to review your account. To prepare, you want to be able to show you know what you have been buying from them, when you have been buying it, and the prices you have been paying. You want a presentation ready report to help you make your case. 1. The information we might want is available on several reports. One option is to run Customer Purchase History (report SRSD) for that Supplier. Run that report. 2. Enter a date range that will give you some data. 3. Select one supplier from the drop down list. 4. Uncheck the flag for Include Non-Inventory Bills as our goal is to view just what items we have purchased. 5. Press OK to run the report. 6. Notice this report shows us the detail of every invoice we have received from this supplier in the time period entered. 7. Let s bring this report to Excel. Press the Excel button in Minotaur. 8. Save As an Excel workbook file with an.xlsx extension. 9. Highlight the row that contains the Dash underlines. Delete that row. 10. Highlight the rows that contain the Filter Selections and Delete those rows. 11. We need to remove the ZERO interim bills holding records from this report. Let s first group them together so they are easy to delete. Highlight the entire range of data, select Sort and Filter, Custom sort on the Home ribbon. Choose to sort on the Item field. You will get a warning that Excel notices that you have some numbers in this column and other entries that are alphabetic. Say OK and it will sort the numbers first with all the ZERO entries together at the bottom. 12. Highlight and delete all rows with the ZERO entries. 13. Now we have a report which represents all our purchases to the selected supplier during the time period we specified. Note that the first column is somewhat irrelevant but it is also not harmful. We want to remember which supplier this data is for, so let s leave it in for now. 14. Place your cursor on the top left column heading Supplier and Insert PivotTable and press OK. 15. Click the Description field first. That places the items you buy from this supplier along the columns. 10 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

11 16. Click the Date field next and drag it to the columns section. Then group by Month. 17. Place the Extension amount into the values section of the report. Now we can see what we have purchased from this Supplier since the beginning of this year. 18. Feel free to alter your report by choosing a design option or dragging other fields into the columns, rows or values sections to see the effect it has. If you don t like the effect unclick that field and it will disappear. 19. Remember if you ultimately want to Pivot a report regularly and you can t find a stock report with all the information you want, or it doesn t come across in a column format for clean parsing (must have two spaces between each column for Excel to parse) and you don t want to have to prepare it before pivoting, you have two choices, a. first is to write a list report using Minotaur s flexible report writer (you can take our flexible report writer training seminar to learn to do this) or b. have Minotaur write one for you that is designed for easy flowing to Excel. 11 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e

12 Appendix A Before pivoting we must be sure that the columns correctly identify the fields you want to look at in the PivotTable and that the rows correctly identify the records. There can be no blank spaces or nonsense rows and columns allowed for effective Pivoting. 1. Highlight any top rows that contain the Minotaur Filter selections and press Delete. 2. Delete any rows that came across from Minotaur as dashed underlines (under column headings). We ve removed them from some reports that offer unformatted output but other Minotaur reports typically have the dashes We also don t need the Total row at the very bottom of the report because the PivotTable will calculate all relevant Totals for you. To delete each of these rows (highlight the row on left number column and right click to delete or type Alt-E+D) 5. Now, let s examine our Columns, do all of these columns make sense to bring forward to our report? NO, if a column has the same heading as another column, it will not work. Either rename that column or delete whichever one is not relevant. YES, to delete an entire column where you don t need to keep any information contained, like the column with the repetitive words Part Type, just highlight the column on the top bar A B C etc, right click and press Delete or type Alt E+D then Enter. 6. Now examine your Column Headings, do they make sense to you? Would you prefer to change any? a. You may have two Name Columns. One represents the Customer Name and the other represents the Item Name. Change those column headings to say Customer Name and Item Name respectively. It will become clear the value of doing this when we pivot the data. b. Also rename the duplicate words Code to Customer Code and Item Code. 7. Resave your sheet. Press File, Save or Alt-F+S and return to the PivotTable instructions. 12 P a g e M i n o t a u r U s e r C o n f e r e n c e