It’s a new year, and you’d like to do a

year-over-year analysis showing if each

customer bought more or less in 2009

than in 2008. This month, we’ll look at

four different methods for building the

report.

Let’s say that you can gather an

invoice register for 2008 on one work-

sheet and an invoice register for 2009

on another worksheet. The structure of

the report will vary depending on your

system, but let’s assume that each report

at least has a column for Customer

Name and another for Revenue.

Method 1: Pivot Tableto Compare Two ListsAdd a new blank worksheet to your

workbook. Add three columns: Cus-

tomer, Revenue, and Year. Copy the Cus-

tomer and Revenue columns from the

2008 worksheet to columns A and B of

the blank workbook. Fill column C with

“2008” for all of these records. Below

that data, paste the Customer and Rev-

enue from the 2009 worksheet into

columns A and B, filling column C with

“2009” for all of those records.

Choose one cell in your new data set.

Select the Pivot Table command from

either the Data menu (Excel 2003) or the

Insert tab (Excel 2007). Click OK or Finish

to create a blank pivot table. Drag the

Customer field to the Row area, the Year

field to the Column area, and the Rev-

enue field to the Data Items area. To

improve the report, remove the grand

total column by unchecking Grand Total

for Rows in the PivotTable Options dia-

log. Add a Calculated Item called Delta,

which calculates ‘2009’/‘2008’-1. In

PivotTable Options, add a checkmark

next to “For Error Values Show,” and

leave the textbox blank to hide the

division by zero errors. You now have

a report as shown in Figure 1.

Method 2: Pivot Tablewith Date GroupingThis method works particularly well if

your 2008 and 2009 columns are in the

same format and if your data has an

invoice date field. Copy the 2009 data

(minus the headings) beneath the 2008

data. Choose one cell and add a pivot

table. Drag the Invoice Date field to the

row area. Right-click the first date and

choose Group. In the Grouping dialog

box, select both months and years.

Click OK.

The PivotTable Field list now offers a

new virtual field called Years. Drag the

Years field to the column area. Remove

the Date field from the Row area. Add

Customer to the row area. Add Revenue

to the Data area. As in Method 1, you can

remove the Grand Total for Rows from

PivotTable Options. Since you’ve grouped

the date field, however, you can’t add a

calculated item to calculate the Delta. This

calculation will have to be entered as a

formula next to the pivot table. While

building the formula, don’t point to cells

using the mouse or the arrow keys.

Instead, type the formula. Otherwise, you

might get the annoying GetPivotData

functions, which don’t copy well.

Both methods 1 and 2 will fail if the

combined data from the invoice registers

contains more rows than your version of

Excel offers. In that case, you can use

the consolidation method.

Method 3:ConsolidationThe Consolidation command works with

a single column of labels in the left col-

umn and any number of numeric fields

going across. You can then consolidate

multiple ranges. Excel will match up the

54 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Ja n u a r y 2 0 1 0

TECHNOLOGY

EXCELYear-Over-Year Analysis Using Excel

By Bill Jelen

customers in the first column of each

range and present a summary.

Set up a range with Customer in col-

umn A and 2008 revenue in column B.

Make sure that the heading in B1

includes the year in the heading. For

example, “2008 Revenue.” It’s okay to

have each customer appear multiple

times in this range, so you can copy

directly from your invoice register.

Set up a similar range with Customer in

column D and 2009 Revenue in Column E.

Select a blank section of your work-

sheet, perhaps cell G1. From the Data

menu, select Consolidate.

In the Consolidate dialog, choose the

range in columns A and B. Click Add.

Then choose the range in columns D and

E. Click Add. In the bottom of the dialog,

choose both Top Row and Left column.

Click OK. Figure 2 shows the Consolidate

dialog.

The result will be a superset of all cus-

tomers found in either list. Because

columns B and E had different headings,

you’ll have two numeric columns to the

right of the customers. Note that the

customer heading will always be missing

from cell G1. Also note that the cus-

tomers won’t be

sorted. Select cell

G1 and click the

Sort button to

sort by customer.

Then you can

add the Delta

column.

Method 4:Use a Third-Party ToolIf all of the above methods seem too

intimidating, there are several third-party

utilities that will allow you to compare

the two worksheets in a couple of clicks.

All of them offer a free trial period that

will easily allow you to get the year-end

reporting done while you try them out.

Easy-XL (www.Easy-XL.com) offers the

Compare Sheets command. Start on the

2008 invoice register. Select Compare

Sheets. Choose to compare to the 2009

invoice register. Group by Customer, and

select Revenue from both sheets. The

popular Active Data audit software

(www.InformationActive.com) offers sim-

ilar steps with their Compare Sheets

command. And DigDB (www.DigDB.

com) offers the Roll up command. First,

manually combine both years’ data into

a single worksheet, as in Method 2.

Then go to Column, Convert, Date To,

Year. Finally, use the Roll up command.

After performing this analysis with

any of the four methods, you’ll be able

to focus on two specific classes of cus-

tomer. Look for customers who had rev-

enue in 2008 and now have no revenue

in 2009. Why did these customers leave?

Also focus on the customers who pur-

chased for the first time in 2009. Find

out how these customers found you and

if they are happy with their new relation-

ship with you. SF

Bill Jelen is the host of MrExcel.com and

the author of 25 books, including Excel

Gurus Gone Wild. Send questions for

future articles to IMA@MrExcel.com.

Ja n u a r y 2 0 1 0 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 55

Figure 1 Figure 2