Executives what to know - How is my portfolio doing in terms of Planned Revenue vs Actual Revenue and Planned Expense vs Actual Expense?

 

In this article I will cover how to find the Delta between two numbers.

A while back I wrote an article where I showed the how to utilized various queries to find difference and commonalities between two data sets. You might want to check it out.

Lets looks at a simple example where an organization is running multiple projects and needs to determine how projects are doing in terms of how the project owners predicted the value of the project will be in terms of planed revenue versus the actual revenue. The same goes to comparing the planned expenses, that will be as part of executing this project, and the actual expenses.

BTW, revenue is not the same as income or profit, we will not cover their differences this article. Simply revenue is a gross amount and income or profit reports the net proceeds.

To find the Delta between the Planned Revenue and Actual Revenue.

Absolute Delta formula:

Delta Planned Revenue vs Actual Revenue = Planned Revenue - Actual Revenue

Delta Planned Expense vs Actual Expense = Planned Expense - Actual Expense

Relative Delta formula:

Delta Planned Revenue vs Actual Revenue = (Planned Revenue - Actual Revenue) / Planned Revenue * 100

Delta Planned Expense vs Actual Expense = (Planned Expense - Actual Expense) / Planned Expense * 100

This will provide the Percent (%) difference between the two numbers.

Here is a dashboard which clearly specifies the difference between planned revenue/expenses and actual revenue/expenses.

Now if you are overseeing the portfolio, you’d better have another dashboard explaining that differences to the executives.

Let me know what are your thoughts In the comments below.