You have looked at the difference between the actual and budget expenses in the different expense categories. You want to communicate the variances visually. This video shows how to use a steps to a total column graph to show the actual expenses and variance in each category and how they add to the total expense amount.
I learned the trick for two-level category labels from this article by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic.
For more on creating dotted or dashed lines to compare to columns, see this video: https://youtu.be/L09E3y_N-no
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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
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Dave Paradi has over twenty years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written nine books and over 100 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 less than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel and PowerPoint communities. He regularly presents highly rated sessions at national and regional conferences of financial professionals and is NASBA registered to deliver CPE credit courses to CPAs.
