Welcome to the last part of my Easy Profit & Loss series where I will cover KPIs in rows & columns:
1) KPIs in columns
Show all your figures as a percent of turnover for example: Nice & easy: Divide current figure by the total sum of turnover:
Turnover% =
ABS (
DIVIDE (
[ActSign],
CALCULATE (
[ActSign],
FILTER (
ALL ( IndividualAccountsLayout ),
IndividualAccountsLayout[Description in Report] = “Income”
)
)
)
)
We need to leave the current row context to retrieve the turnover-value in each row, therefore the ALL.
2) KPIs in rows
The KPIs (that shall be shown in rows, within the same column of the main values) come in 3 different flavours:
- “KPI”
- Create one measure for each KPI (if you prefer to have full control of the KPIs used/shown in the reports)
- “Divide”
- Let the report designer create its own KPIs by editing the nominator (“Argument1”) and denominator (“Argument2”) column in the report design table. They reference to existing rows in the report-definition. So you don’t have to define any KPI-measures in advance.
- “KPI_PreviousRow”
- This sweet little cracker is my favourite, as it combines the advantages of the two approaches above: You don’t have to define all your possible KPI measures in advance, but just those for the denominator. The value for the nominator will automatically be given as the previous row. So the report designer has the flexibility to create his own KPIs but is prevented to make stupid errors.
To make this magic happen, there are 3 new columns in the report design table:
3 new column in the report design
For the standard KPI (1) you just fill in “KPI” in the Type column and the name of the measure in the column “Argument1”.
The Divide-measure (2) gets a “Divide” in the “Type” column, in the “Argument1” the nominator and the denominator goes into “Argument2”.
For the KPI_PreviousRow (3) the first argument gets the denominator, as the nominator is no argument (but by default the value of the previous row).
All that’s left now is to create the SWITCH-measure that chooses the measure accoring the entry in the “Type” column:
ActKPI =
SWITCH (
TRUE (),
[Type_] = BLANK (), [ActSign],
[Type_] = “KPI”, [KPI_Switch],
[KPI_Divide]
)
With the [KPI_Switch] – measure looking up the different KPIs defined in column “Argument1” like so for example:
KPI_Switch =
SWITCH (
TRUE (),
MAX ( IndividualAccountsLayout[Argument1] ) = “KPI_Cogs%”, [KPI_Cogs%],
MAX ( IndividualAccountsLayout[Argument1] ) = “KPI_Profit%”, [KPI_Profit%]
)
Where KPI_Divide looks like so:
KPI_Divide =
IF (
OR ( [Type_] = “Divide”, [Type_] = “KPI_PreviousRow” ),
DIVIDE ( [MArg1], [MArg2] ),
BLANK ()
)
We don’t need a separate measure for the KPI_PreviousRow, because it is included in the KPI_Divide. Therefore I’ve transformed all these rows into the form of the KPI_Divide: Moved the denominator that stood in “Argument1” to “Argument2” (red) and evaluated the previous row that then went into “Argument1” as the nominator (green).
Definition in report design
Result after transformations: Harmonized with Type “Divide”
As you can see – the possibilities to avoid DAX are manifold 😉 . Of course, you can reduce the options or add others, this is just to give you an idea of a possible setup.
Measure MArg1 contains the value for the first argument:
MArg1 =
CALCULATE (
[ActSign],
FILTER (
ALL ( IndividualAccountsLayout ),
IndividualAccountsLayout[Description in Report]
= MAX ( IndividualAccountsLayout[Argument1] )
)
)
Again, a simple FILTER/ALL-construct, but now working as a variable lookup instead of referencing a fixed value: It fetches the value where the “Description in Report” has the same value than the entry in column “Argument1” of the current row. (The MAX here is only needed to transform the format of what “IndividualAccountsLayout[Argument1]” returns (a column) into a scalar value (because only scalars can sit on the right side of an equation/comparison). So a MIN would work just as good.)
When we drag that new measure to the report pane, we have to deal with an unpleasant compromise, that hopefully will be solved soon: We cannot use different number formats within one column in PowerBI. So we cannot show them as percentage while leaving the main values as (decimal) numbers. Although DAX provides format functions allowing us to apply specific formats to numbers, those results will actually become text-values and will be aligned to the left. No chance currently to adjust the alignment in PowerBI. So please vote for this feature here: AlignColumnContent .
But to compensate for this disappointment, you get some squared traffic lights (sorry, no smart DAX-formatter for UNICHAR availabe yet):
TrafficLight = UNICHAR(IF([Diff%]<>BLANK(),IF([Diff%]>0,1,128215,0,IF([Diff%]>-0,05,128210,0,128213)),BLANK()))
A measure that returns different UNICHAR characters, depending of the differences between actual and budget figures ([Diff%]). Here the thresholds are set to green if more than 10% over budget, red if more than 5% below budget and yellow for everything in between. Thanks to Chris Webb for bringing this cool feature to my attention. (If you know the numbers for green/yellow and red circles, of course please post a comment or send me an email!)
Another feature that’s worth mentioning: You can hide the accounts details by selecting “No” in “IsAccounts”:
A quasi-drillthrough for tables in PowerBI (another feature that’s currently missing). (In this report, it doesn’t look so good, because of its asymetric design. But you can design reports where this feature produces good looking reports in both modes).
Download for logged-in subscribers: AcctScheme4_KPIV5.zip
Edit 14-Dec-2017: Now that we can right-align text-measures, the SWITCH-measure that SamDuoNing has posted in the comments is the way to go!
Enjoy & stay queryious 🙂
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