Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By : Mark Polino
Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By: Mark Polino

Overview of this book

Accounting systems like Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 hold a wealth of information. Excel 2013 provides a great tool for linking to, extracting, analysing, and presenting that rich data to help companies make better, faster, and smarter decisions.Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 covers how to get the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. The book shows in detail how to build great-looking dashboards that enhance a company's decision-making process.This book shows you how to get at the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. This guide will take you from the basics of setup and deployment to creating secure, refreshable Excel reports. Using a whole host of tools available within Excel, this tutorial will show you how to visualize your data using simple conditional formatting techniques, easy-to-read charts, and allow you to make your data interactive with Slicers. Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 provides a way for you to easily build that interactive dashboard that your CFO keeps asking for.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Icon sets


Icon sets are a great way to segregate data with an identifier based on thresholds. For example, we can say that any time revenue is above a certain number, we're doing fine. If it's between two numbers; we're worried, and below a certain number we're in trouble. Icon sets let you represent data like this graphically. A firm might say that monthly revenue over a million dollars is fine, revenue between 750,000 and a million is okay, and revenue under seven fifty requires management to intervene to find out what's going on.

The first tier can be represented by a green circle, the middle tier by a yellow triangle, and the last tier by a red diamond. This gives anyone even glancing at the dashboard a good idea of what needs their attention.

Tip

An option in Excel 2013 is to use the same icon but a different color to represent the different tiers: a circle in red, yellow, or green, for example. This isn't a great idea for two reasons. First, some people have trouble distinguishing color...