Project 2 - Financial Analysis Dashboard

Project Overview

Financial dashboards help organizations monitor revenue, expenditure, profitability, and budget performance.

In this project, you will create a report that compares actual financial results against planned budgets.

Dataset Requirements

Use a dataset containing fields such as:

• TransactionDate
• Department
• AccountCategory
• ActualAmount
• BudgetAmount
• CostCenter

The dataset may come from an Excel workbook or a supported database.

Step 1: Prepare the Data Model

Import the financial data and clean the fields using Power Query.

If actual transactions and budgets are stored separately, consider creating separate fact tables with shared dimensions such as Date, Department, and Account Category.

Avoid joining tables solely because they share a column name. Design relationships according to the actual business meaning and data granularity.

Step 2: Create Financial Measures

Calculate actual expenditure:

Actual Expenditure =

SUM(Finance[ActualAmount])

Calculate the budget:

Total Budget =

SUM(Finance[BudgetAmount])

Calculate the difference between actual expenditure and budget:

Budget Variance =

[Total Budget] - [Actual Expenditure]

With this definition, a positive variance means spending is below budget, while a negative variance means spending exceeds budget.

Calculate budget utilization:

Budget Utilization % =

DIVIDE(

[Actual Expenditure],

[Total Budget]

)

Format the utilization measure as a percentage.

Step 3: Design the Dashboard

Include:

• Actual expenditure and total budget KPI cards.
• Budget utilization percentage.
• A chart comparing actual spending with budget by department.
• A monthly expenditure trend.
• A table showing budget variance by cost center.

Use consistent number formats and clearly identify whether a variance represents underspending or overspending.

Step 4: Interpret the Results

The dashboard can help answer questions such as:

• Which departments exceed their budgets?
• Which expense categories have increased?
• How does spending change month by month?
• Which departments have significant unspent budgets?

Expected outcome: A financial dashboard that supports budget monitoring and helps teams identify unusual spending patterns.