Question regarding calculating growth

[ranopano]

Hello, I need to display our company's total sales over a 3 year period and then calculate the growth (a simple trendline is fine).
My question is that we are opening up new stores several times a week, so our store count is obviously much greater than it was in 2013. How would I take this into account when calculating the growth?

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Year	Sales
2012	$1,000,000
2013	$1,500,000
2014	$2,500,00

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Year	Store Count
2012	400
2013	500
2014	650

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So how would i go about this? I was thinking for 2012, taking $1,000,000/400 and applying that formula for all years then calculating the trend based on the division result, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

 

[jorismoerings]

Hi,

To do some formula's for calculating growth is quite easy but ....the devil is in the details. Are you lkooking for absolute growth, average growth per store or autonomous growth or ......
The approach you've mentioned creates a trend based on average Sales per store, using averages could suffice if the stores are comparable in size, etc.
So the growth ratio you're looking for, depends of your definition of growth.