Today you will learn a great visual to use when presenting Assets or Liabilities from the Balance Sheet.
Too often Balance Sheet presentations to executives or the Board are filled with spreadsheets. In my surveys of audiences they tell me that large tables of numbers are confusing and overwhelming. Our audiences want meaningful visuals instead of confusing spreadsheets.
You already have the tool you need to create these visuals, Excel. That’s right, the Excel you’ve used for years is all you need to create a graph that visually shows the relative size of each asset category along with how that category has changed since last year. I call it a steps to a total graph and in this video you’ll see what it looks like, how to set up the data for the graph and tips on creating the graph in Excel.
The graph you’ll see allows the executives or Board to quickly compare the Asset category amounts and see the change from last year. This same graph can be used for the Liabilities section of the Balance Sheet as well.
And don’t worry, I won’t suggest you need to learn VBA programming or buy some add-in that your IT department won’t allow you to install on your corporate laptop. Everything you see is done in plain vanilla Excel.
Want to learn more?
See more examples of visuals to use when presenting financial statements, results, or analysis
Read about visuals that work when presenting the Income or Profit/Loss statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement
Get training to improve your skills at creating effective financial visuals
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don’t overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.