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ExcelUser FAQs:

Questions & Answers About Our Products

Here are some frequent questions and answers about about Kyd dashboard reports
for Excel.

Answers by Charley Kyd

1. How do I install your software?

2. What kind of guarantee do you offer?

3. How can I test your software before I buy it?

4. If my hard drive crashes, or I change jobs, can I get another copy?

5. Do you have any sample dashboards for my industry?

6. Do you have any non-financial dashboards?

7. My company reimbursed me for my purchase. Can I get a copy for myself?

8. How can I use Excel dashboards in a collaborative environment?

9. I'm an Excel expert. Why do I need your dashboards? I can do it myself.

10. Can I create speedometer gauges with your Excel dashboards?

11. After I enter data in your Plug-N-Play dashboard, how do I make the dashboard display my data?

How do I install your software?

There's nothing to install. The Plug-N-Play products aren't programs. And they're not even Excel ad-ins.

My products are Excel workbooks with no macros and with nothing hidden. The ebook kit includes a pdf file for the ebook itself and more than 20 workbooks that are discussed in the book. You just open the files and start to use them.

By the way, I created this nothing-hidden approach intentionally. You don't need software magic to create outstanding performance dashboards. All you need are the good spreadsheet techniques that took me 20 years to develop. I'd rather demonstrate those techniques, and teach them, than to keep them secret.

What kind of guarantee do you offer?

I offer an unconditional one-year money-back guarantee.

How can I test your software before I buy it?

You can't. Let me tell you why, and what I offer instead...

When software companies offer free trials, they include some way for the software to automatically expire after some period of time. But that's impossible to do with ordinary spreadsheets.

So, instead of offering a free trial, I offer two other options. First, I offer low-cost Plug-N-Play Samplers. Second, all products are guaranteed for one year. So if you don't like one of my products, you can get your money back.

If my hard drive crashes, or I change jobs, can I get another copy?

No problem. This happens all the time. Just send me an email message and I'll send you another download link.

Do you have any sample dashboards for my industry?

Probably not.

Thousands of companies use my dashboard products; they represent hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of different operating departments and industries. So I haven't tried to accumulate examples of dashboards about any specific industries. At least, not until recently.

Recently, I posted the article A Hospital Administrator Shows How Excel Dashboards Improve Outcomes. I encourage other dashboard users to send me examples I can feature of their work. Perhaps in the near future I will have sample dashboards for your industry.

Do you have any non-financial dashboards?

You can track any data you want with my dashboards, including both financial and non-financial data.

Here's how it works...The dashboards display text and numbers found in spreadsheet cells. But Excel doesn't care whether that information is about finance, population trends, medical test results, or bags of coffee beans. Enter whatever information you want.

I think people ask this question so frequently because one of the sample tables in the Plug-N-Play products has accounting-like information. I include that example because a lot of accountants use Excel and they often need to display information about the current month and the year to date. But if you don't need that type of information, change the table any way you want. Just make sure that your finished table is about the size of my sample table.

My company reimbursed me for my purchase. Can I get a copy for myself?

No problem. If you placed the original order, you're our customer. So if you ever need another copy, just let us know and we'll send you another download link.

How can I use Excel dashboards in a collaborative environment?

That's a good question, which I'll need to discuss more fully in a future article. But I'll summarize my answer here.

Excel, by itself, is a one-person tool. But dashboards distributed in a pdf file or displayed as images on an intranet make it easy to report insights about performance to any number of people.

Excel dashboard reports, are just that: reports. They're snapshots of performance. Snapshots are a good thing, particularly in a collaborative environment. After all, when people meet -- either in a room or over the web -- they're more effective if the participants aren't surfing databases during the meeting. Instead, using snapshots focuses everyone's attention. And Excel dashboards provide the most insight-rich reporting approach that I've ever seen.

Another aspect of collaboration is common source data. Where feasible, it's best for reports and analyses to draw their data from a centralized source. This is why I'm such a fan of Excel-friendly OLAP solutions like IBM's TM1 and PARIS Technologies' PowerOLAP. These technologies make it very easy for Excel users to scale their work from an all-Excel solution, to a departmental solution, to an enterprise solution.

I'm an Excel expert. Why do I need your dashboards? I can do it myself.

You certainly can do it yourself! My ebook teaches you how.

However, you're probably asking why you can't just look at my sample dashboards and then create some of your own that are just like them.

When you build an Excel dashboard from scratch, you have three problems to solve:

1. How can I create the report page with the charts, tables, and formatting I want?
2. How can I set up the "plumbing" in the workbook so I can display accurate data easily?
3. How can I link to standard sources of data so I can update the report easily?

It took me 20 years to develop good answers to these three questions. And with each month that passes, I think of new ways to make Excel dashboard reporting easier and more powerful.

Even if you're such an Excel expert that it takes you only months, rather than years to answer the three questions, that's probably not the best use of your time. Instead, you'll create better dashboards more quickly if you start with the work that I've done and then build on it.

Can I create speedometer gauges with your Excel dashboards?

No. My dashboards are limited to the types of charts that Excel supports, and Excel doesn't support gauges.

But even if Excel could support gauges, I would strongly encourage you not to use them. They take up a lot of space in your report merely to display one number.

These days, in a struggling economy, managers need real information, not eye candy. You're doing them no favors by giving them dashboards that include gauges.

After I enter data in your Plug-N-Play dashboard, how do I make the dashboard display my data?

Your dashboard is like any other Excel workbook. To update your charts and tables, just press F9 to recalculate.

Or, you can set automatic calculation. To do so in Classic Excel, choose Tools, Options, Calculation, Automatic. In New Excel, choose Formulas, Calculation, Calculation Options, Automatic.