Comparing Sales of One Product with Another

[Excel Techniques]
Posted on April 25th, 2011 in Charts and Graphs - 13 comments

This is a guest article by Theodor on how to Compare Sales of One Product with Another
Ok, now heres one for you.
Suppose youd like to come up with a sales report on different products, comparing their evolution on the
same period of different years (say Jan 09 vs. Jan Jan 10). At the same time, youd like to keep an eye on
their yearly trend (entire 2009 vs. entire 2010).
No big deal, youll say, but heres the twist: the products hav e not been av ailable for the entire tim e
span taken into consideration. Lets say youve only had Product 1 available for sale for Feb 09 onwards,
while it had been discontinued from October 10. If youre really looking for a Like-For-Like (LFL) comparison,
youd only want to compare the months where you have data for both years. Its false to claim youve had a
sales boost of 300% when you entered the market with Product X in October 2009, selling 1000 units over 3
months and compare that to the full results of 2010, when youve sold 3000 units. In the first scenario you
were averaging some 333 units/month, while later youve dropped to a mere 250/month. Nothing to brag
about there, is it?
Ah, but we also have different product classes. One is aimed for the high-profile buyer (A-Class products),
the second for the middle level (B-Class) and so on. Given that different products were added to each classs
portfolio and then later discontinued, we should see the total LFL development of each product class in the
same graphical representation.
Hold on another second. One country is defining its quarters as Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun etc, while other might
relate a quarterly result to a specific day in the company history (such as the company launch date, or since
the new CEO took over or whatever). Wouldnt it be nice to be able to compare equivalent datasets in any
user-defined time span?

So how do you compare sales of one product with another?

Now Ive always said that the second hardest thing mankind has ever done was to send men on the
Moon and safely return them home. Thats only because the MOST difficult thing in the world has
becom e to com pare apples with apples. There are so many subtle differences between one dataset and
the other (even though they both relate to the same source), that if one reporting template is to have a long
life, it should first and foremost come with the built-in ability to allow the end user to drill down through the
data and change criteria in order to get relevant results for todays issue. And all that will change tomorrow,
as there will lay a new and unexpected issue on the table.
With that in mind, when I create my templates I follow the self-made golden rule (which later I found many
others have applied for themselves long before I knew Excel ever existed) keep the raw data in one sheet,
preferably hidden; use a second sheet for calculation, ALWAYS hidden, and provide a simple and useful
graphical interface for the end-user in the third sheet. This will avoid any mishaps such as Could you please
put your formulas back in, I donno which button I pressed and.!!

Comparing Sales of One Product with Another Demo:

First see the demo of this technique. Then, we can learn how I created it.

Coming to the attached example which only works in Excel 2007 and later, by the way:
Your data is in sheet data, ordered by product and timeline (Jan-Dec, 2009 and 2010). Ive created
the values using the =randbetween() formula, and then copy-pasted the values only so they will not
change anymore.
To keep things more clear, Ive placed the calculation formulas in the same sheet as that with the
graph, just so you can compare values and figure out formulas more quickly, without having to switch
between sheets all the time.

How the Sales Comparison Chart is made?

Now, to bring up v alues of a particular product, Ive created a list in C44:C70 (values in column B are just
for guidance). We can compare two products, which can be chosen from a couple of drop-down boxes linked
to cells B6 and B8. Heres where the values in column B help: basically, they tell me which item index from the
drop-down corresponds to a product. I then placed the same item indexes in data!A7:A46. This is all because
I am lazy and I find the sumifs() formula a blessing: all I have to do now is to add up the results that
correspond to (1) the chosen Product in the drop-down, which is looked up by the index, and (2) the year,
which is in data!E6:E45. [More on INDEX Formula]

An alternative in Excel 2003 would have been to concatenate the value of Product 1&2009 for example,
to get a unique identifier and not return the sales value of 2010 by mistake. Then vlookup() after the
concatenated value. [Related: How to lookup based on multiple conditions]
These calculations are placed in Yr sls!F51:Q54. Note theres an initial IF() there, to only display the values if
the respective month is selected. There are two sliders up in the second row, which can help you cut your
desired portion of the year for comparison.
Yr sls!F61:Q68, using sumifs() again, I added the sales values for each product class. Finally, in Yr
sls!F45:Q48 are the final calculation, where if an item index lower than 8 (corresponding to Product 1) is
selected, the values in F61:Q68 are brought up, else the values in F51:Q54.
So now we see our resulting values above the chart, in cells F6:Q9. The deviation is calculated in F5:Q5. But
for the yearly totals, I only want to compare apples with apples, i.e. months in which sales have been
recorded in both years. For that I used cells U6:AF9. The totals in R6:R9 are based on these isnumber()
results. This allows you to have the exact deviation between similar months over an user-defined time span.
Ok, time to close. But not before your boss knows the exact portfolio of each product class! Look shortly in
data!B6:B45. This is where, using countif(), we have the number of occurrences for each product class.
Knowing that product class A will be repeated say 3 times, well use this knowledge to look up the third
occurrence of A and bring up the product next to it. Now take a peak in sheet Legend. Knowing we have
to lookup for A 1, thats how I wrote the formula. But also knowing that A will be repeated twice for each
product (once for 2009, another for 2010) and not wanting to see duplicates in my product list, theres a very
simple solution: just use odd numbers!! This will only bring up every 2nd occurrence of a product. As I said, I
like it simple
I just left the numbers in C5:C15 visible so you dont have to fish around for them, the rest
are simply I the same color as the background. A bit of conditional formatting does the rest.
Of course, before presenting this to any decision maker, youd hide the rows and columns theyre not
supposed to touch and present them with a clean looking table.

Download the Excel Workbook:

Click here to download the workbook with this example. Examine the formulas and chart in Yr Sls
worksheet to understand how this is weaved together.
[Added by Chandoo]

Thank you Theodor

Thank you so much Theodor for teaching us some valuable techniques on how to compare apples with apples.
I am sure our readers will find these ideas very useful.
If you like this post, say thanks to Theodor.

Do you compare & analyze sales data?

I do this all the time. As part of running my small business, every couple of months, I would take up sales
data and see if something odd is going on. I make line charts comparing sales of this year with previous year,
understanding the overall trend and compare one product with another.
What about you? Do you analyze sales data? What techniques do you use use? Please share using
comments.

Learn more from these pages:

If you work a lot with data & do sim ilar work as abov e, go thru these articles to learn m ore.
Comparison charts using Form Controls
Introduction to Excel Form Controls
Budget vs. Actual Charts in Excel
More: Comparison Charts Examples & Techniques
More: Excel Dynamic Charts Examples, Demos & Techniques
Join: My Excel School Program to learn these and many other Excel techniques
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13 Responses to Comparing Sales of One Product with Another [Excel Techniques]

1.

Red says:
April 25, 2011 at 4:43 pm
ZOMG!!! The GIFs were like pure sex.
Reply

2.

Rajnikant says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Hi,
Can not download the filesome error in the file.
Reply

3.

Fred says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Thanks! Theodor and Chandoo!
I can totally use this techniques at work. that said, I dont do internal product comparison because itd
be comparing apples to oranges. however, Id use this to compare against similar competitive
products. In some businesses you can collect relatively accurate info on your competitors, and
competitors on yours. In that case, product comparison would be tremendously valuable.
when I compare data I also display the % and absolute figure changed over the selected period of
time because mgmt dont really care what the figures show. They instead want to know what the
figures mean, like which products is growing/declining at what rate. Ill add on the quarterly, 3-month
moving average, 6-month moving average, 12-month moving average, CYTD vs PYTD, CYTD Actuals vs
CYTD-Budgets.
Once again, thank you thank you thank you!
Reply

4.

SteveT says:
April 26, 2011 at 1:58 pm
I like the way you have structured the pick list. Never thought of using it in a mixed bag (of apples) sort
of way.
Reply

5.

Chandoo says:
April 27, 2011 at 3:43 am
@Rajni. The download link is working fine for me. Can you try again?
Reply

6.

Raj says:
April 29, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Dear Chandoo,
When i tried to open it is showing it is not in the recognizable format. Please help.. probably send me
in lower version.
Regards,