What goes into a good dashboard
A dashboard is useful when it answers three questions at a glance: how much in total, how it is changing, and what is driving it. SheetGlance builds each of these from your columns:
- KPI cards: the number of records, the total of your main amount and its change versus the previous half or period.
- Trend: your main amount by day, week or month, split by region or channel where that helps, and compared with a target or budget column if you have one.
- Breakdowns: share, ranking and cross-tab charts for your most useful categories, such as status, product or region.
- A written summary: the overview, trend, structure, comparison and points worth noting, written like a short report.
Examples you can try
The dashboard maker comes with four realistic examples, each modelled on a common business review:
- Business review: monthly sales, target and gross profit by region and product line.
- Accounts receivable: invoices with customer, amount collected, outstanding balance, ageing and status.
- E-commerce: visitors, orders, conversion rate, GMV, ad spend and refunds across three platforms.
- Inventory: stock on hand, 30-day sales, days of cover, ABC class and stock-out risk by warehouse.
Which spreadsheets work best
Dashboards work best with one row per record: one order, one invoice, one post or one product, plus columns for its attributes. A date column, one or two category columns and one amount column are enough for a full dashboard.
You don’t need to clean the file first. SheetGlance finds the header row under titles and notes, fills merged cells, skips total rows and lets you switch between sheets. If your file is a single document, such as a quotation or invoice, it opens as a structured overview with the line items and totals instead.
If your table has only a few rows of totals, such as one row per month, you probably want a line graph or bar graph instead.
How to build a dashboard in Excel
- Convert your data to a table with Insert → Table.
- Create PivotTables (Insert → PivotTable) for each view: totals by month, by region, by product.
- Add a PivotChart for each PivotTable (PivotTable Analyze → PivotChart).
- Add Slicers and a Timeline (PivotTable Analyze → Insert Slicer / Insert Timeline) and connect them to every PivotTable with Report Connections.
- Arrange the charts on one sheet and add KPI cells with formulas like
SUMIFS.
This gives you a reusable dashboard but takes an hour or more to set up. SheetGlance gives you a first version in seconds, which is often enough for a weekly update or a one-off question.
How to build a dashboard in Google Sheets or Looker Studio
In Google Sheets, create pivot tables (Insert → Pivot table), add a chart for each one, then add Data → Add a slicer to filter them together. Looker Studio is Google’s free dashboard tool: connect your sheet as a data source, then place scorecards, time series and filters on a page. Both work well for dashboards you update every week; both take longer than dropping a file.
Share and export
Rename the dashboard, remove cards you don’t need, widen the important ones and drag them into order. Then copy the dashboard as an image for a chat or slide, or click Export PDF to get an A4 report with the charts and the written summary.