Budgetting Charts

[mattykegs]

Hello

I'm working on budgetting tools and need to develop metrics as well as some kind of a graphical representation for the growing level of work that comes in to the department over a multi-year period.

For example, our department supports hundreds of accounts that generally require very limited maintenance. Occasionally an account will require more attention for a number of reasons. The account may need to be renewed, a regulation may be changing, customer fees may be increasing, etc. What I need to track is how these ongoing changes affect the level of resources required for account maintenance over the next several years. If we have a high number of accounts that need to be renewed in September, we want to track that so we can allocate staff.

I've been tracking this with metrics categorized by month similar to the following,

Sept = Account Renewals (20) + Accounts Affected by new regulations (15) + Accounts with new fee structures (10) = 45

Oct = Renewals (5) + New Regulations (4) + new fee structures (6) = 15

This works because we can easily see that we'll have about three times as much work in Sep vs Oct. I have a graph that shows the change in work from month to month. However, what the graph doesn't show is what the source of the work is.

The people I'm reporting this to are very interested in the distinction between work associated with renewals and regulations, amongst other things. Also, there are a lot more than three of these categories. A coworker and I have tried a few different kinds of graphs, but they all end up being confusing.

Thanks very much,
Matt

 

[dtenpas]

Have you tried a Stacked Column Chart?

If you don't have to many categoies that should work.

Hope it helps.

 

[SandiMays]

At Zayo Group we track a similar metric using a stacked bar chart, this format lets us track positive and negative numbers vs. a budget and prior forecast.