Benchmark Chart in Excel 2013

Benchmark Charts or Budget Charts are a great way to show your actual sales versus your benchmark in a graphical way, highlighting the strong v weak months.

There are a few steps but in Excel 2013 it has been made much easier to create these charts with the new Combo charts.

Download excel workbookBenchmark-Chart.xlsx

STEP 1: Enter your data into three columns, the month, the actual sales and the benchmark sales

STEP 2: Click inside your data and go to the ribbon and choose Insert > 2-D Clustered Column

STEP 3: Select the Benchmark series chart and Right Click and choose the Change Series Chart Type

STEP 4: This will automatically take you to the Combo chart box and you need to select the drop down for the Benchmark and select Line with Markers

STEP 5: Click on the line chart and press CTRL+1.  This will open up the Format Chart dialogue box

STEP 6: Select the Line option and choose No Line

STEP 7: Select the Marker Options and choose Built In, select the horizontal line type and increase the Size to 10.  You can also format the color of the line.

John Michaloudis

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John Michaloudis is a former accountant and finance analyst at General Electric, a Microsoft MVP since 2020, an Amazon #1 bestselling author of 4 Microsoft Excel books and teacher of Microsoft Excel & Office over at his flagship MyExcelOnline Academy Online Course.