Frustrations of Compact Form Pivot Tables

[goeb86]

I started a new contract and my boss and the Execs seems to love these "roll up" tables (basically a collapsing table). Her most recent assignment is a roll up with 5 rows and the values are a mixture of 10 Compensation values and %'s of compensation numbers. I had to flatten out a multi-tiered Columned table for starters and the calculated fields in the pivot table can be very exasperating because it could get shifted when a table collapses (which could harm the relative reference)

I don't have much experience with power pivot so it is daunting to create the necessary formulas at times. Having a tabular form or just separate pivot tables for each category would be much more simplistic.

Has anyone ever dealt with this frustration? Any suggestions on how I could convince my superior that Rollup/Compact Form pivot tables could cause issues from a User View standpoint (I doubt she cares about the design impracticality)?

Sorry for the lament, it was needed though after 7 hours of trying to perfect this.

 

[mole999]

My two penneth

If the boss wants to see a particular set of values, they will have a reason, even if its only to make them feel good about the data

I would be tempted to craft a subset from the main data in another sheet, and model from there

 

[goeb86]

Thanks for the suggestion, might be a fruitful idea.