How to Create a Product Management Dashboard in Excel
A great product management dashboard can bring clarity to the chaos, condensing scattered metrics from analytics tools, user feedback platforms, and financial reports into a single, focused view. While sophisticated BI tools have their place, you can build a surprisingly powerful and customized dashboard using something you already have: Microsoft Excel. This guide will walk you through how to transform a blank spreadsheet into a dynamic command center for your product.
Why Build a Product Management Dashboard in Excel?
Before diving into the “how,” let’s briefly touch on the “why.” Building your first dashboard in Excel has a few key advantages, especially for busy product teams.
Accessibility: Nearly everyone has access to Excel and a basic understanding of how it works. There’s no need to procure new software or get budget approval.
Flexibility: You have complete control over what goes into your dashboard and how it looks. You can tailor it precisely to your team's specific KPIs and goals, without being hemmed in by a software provider's template.
Speed: You can build a functional version 1.0 in just a couple of hours. This allows you to start tracking what matters right away, iterating and improving as you go.
Step 1: Choose Your Key Product Metrics (KPIs)
A dashboard is only as useful as the metrics it displays. The biggest mistake product managers make is trying to track everything at once. This creates a cluttered, confusing view that obscures real insights. Instead, focus on a balanced set of KPIs that give you a holistic view of your product’s health across different dimensions.
Group your metrics into logical categories. Here are a few common ones to consider:
1. User Adoption Metrics
These metrics tell you how successfully you are attracting and retaining new users.
Active Users (DAU/MAU): The number of unique users who engage with your product on a daily (Daily Active Users) or monthly (Monthly Active Users) basis.
DAU/MAU Ratio (Stickiness): This percentage (DAU divided by MAU) is a great indicator of how sticky your product is. A higher number means users are coming back more frequently.
New User Growth Rate: Tracks the percentage change in new user sign-ups over a period, showing your product’s momentum in the market.
2. User Engagement Metrics
Once users are in, what are they doing? Engagement metrics help you understand if your product is providing real and consistent value.
Feature Adoption Rate: Measures what percentage of your users engage with a specific feature. This is critical for validating new releases and identifying underused parts of your product.
Session Duration: The average amount of time a user spends in your app per session. Longer sessions can indicate deeper engagement.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS): Quantitative measures of user sentiment, typically sourced from surveys, that gauge overall happiness.
3. Business Outcome Metrics
These KPIs connect your product's performance directly to the company's bottom line.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): For subscription-based products, this is the predictable revenue earned each month. Tracking MRR growth is a core indicator of business health.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The total revenue you can expect from a single customer account — an important metric for understanding profitability and making acquisition budget decisions.
Churn Rate: The percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions in a given period. High churn can signal major issues with product-market fit or user satisfaction.
Pro Tip: Start small. Pick one or two KPIs from each category that are most relevant to your current product goals. You can always add more later.
Step 2: Building Your Product Dashboard in Excel
With your KPIs selected, it’s time to start building. The best practice for creating a flexible Excel dashboard is to separate your data, your analysis, and your presentation into different sheets. This makes it much easier to update and manage over time.
Part A: Setting Up Your 'Raw Data' Sheet
First, create a new sheet and name it "Raw Data". This is where all your source data will live. The key to making everything work smoothly is to structure this data in a clean, tabular format.
For each KPI, you’ll manually add data exported from your source systems (e.g., Google Analytics, Stripe, your own product database). Your table should have columns like:
Date: The day the data point was recorded.
Metric Name: The KPI you are tracking (e.g., "Daily Active Users", "New Signups", "MRR").
Value: The numerical value of the metric.
Segment (Optional): Any relevant category for filtering, like "Mobile vs. Desktop" or "Plan Type".
Format this range as an official Excel Table by selecting your data and pressing Ctrl + T (or going to Insert > Table). Giving your table a name (e.g., "ProductDataTable") in the "Table Design" tab is also helpful.
Your Raw Data table will be your single source of truth for the entire dashboard.
Part B: Creating Summary Tables with PivotTables
Now, create a second sheet named "Pivot Tables". This sheet will be the engine of your dashboard, summarizing your raw data so it can be easily visualized.
For each chart you want on your dashboard, you'll create a separate PivotTable. Let’s create one to track Daily Active Users over time.
Click anywhere inside your "ProductDataTable" on the "Raw Data" sheet.
Go to the Insert tab and click PivotTable.
In the dialog box, choose "New Worksheet" and name this sheet "Pivot Tables". Click OK.
A PivotTable Fields pane will appear on the right. Now, drag and drop the fields like this:
Drag Date into the Rows area.
Drag Metric Name into the Filters area.
Drag Value into the Values area.
In the Filter dropdown that now appears above the PivotTable, select "Daily Active Users".
You now have a clean summary table showing DAU for each day. Repeat this process for every other KPI you want to visualize, creating a new PivotTable for each one on the "Pivot Tables" sheet.
Part C: Visualizing the Data with PivotCharts
With your data summarized, it's time for the fun part: creating the visuals. We will build the charts directly from our PivotTables.
On the "Pivot Tables" sheet, click inside the first PivotTable you created (the DAU one).
Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab and click on PivotChart.
Excel will suggest a chart type. A Line Chart is perfect for tracking a metric over time. Select it and click OK.
A chart will appear. You can clean it up by right-clicking and hiding elements like "Field Buttons" to make it look less cluttered. We recommend removing gridlines and adding a clear, concise title like "Daily Active Users (DAU)".
Repeat this for your other PivotTables, choosing the best chart for each metric (e.g., a Bar Chart to compare feature adoption, a Pie Chart to show user satisfaction breakdown).
Part D: Designing the Final Dashboard
The last step is to assemble all your charts into a single, cohesive view.
Create a final sheet and name it "Dashboard".
Go to your "Pivot Tables" sheet, click on a chart you created, press Ctrl + X to cut it, then navigate to the "Dashboard" sheet and press Ctrl + V to paste it.
Move and resize the charts to create a logical layout. A good practice is to place your most important, high-level KPIs (like MRR and Active Users) at the top.
Use the alignment tools under the Shape Format tab to make sure everything lines up cleanly for a professional look.
You can add a title at the top of the worksheet and a "Last Updated" date to give context to anyone viewing it.
Step 3: Making Your Dashboard Interactive with Slicers
Slicers are user-friendly buttons that allow you (and your stakeholders) to filter your dashboard data dynamically without needing to know any Excel formulas.
Click on any chart on your "Dashboard" sheet.
Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab and click Insert Slicer.
A dialog box will appear with your data columns. Check the box for a field you want to filter by, like "Date" or "Segment". Click OK.
A slicer panel will appear on your dashboard. Now for the most important step: connecting it to all your charts.
Right-click the slicer and select Report Connections....
In the pop-up, check the box for every PivotTable in your workbook. Click OK.
Now, when you click a value in the slicer (e.g., "Mobile"), all the charts on your dashboard that are connected to it will update simultaneously. This is an incredibly powerful way to drill down and explore your data on the fly.
Maintaining Your Dashboard: A Few Practical Tips
An Excel dashboard's biggest limitation is that it doesn't update automatically. You have to maintain it manually.
Schedule a Refresh: Set a recurring calendar reminder (e.g., every Monday at 9 AM) to update your dashboard.
The Refresh Process: To update, you'll export the latest data from your source systems (Google Analytics, etc.), paste the new rows at the bottom of your table on the "Raw Data" sheet, and then go to the Data tab and click Refresh All. This will update all your PivotTables and charts instantly.
Keep it Simple: As your product evolves, so will your KPIs. Don't be afraid to remove charts that are no longer relevant to keep your dashboard focused and impactful.
Final Thoughts
Building a product management dashboard in Excel is a fantastic way to centralize your key metrics and create a shared source of truth for your team. By carefully structuring your data, leveraging PivotTables and PivotCharts, and adding interactivity with slicers, you can create a powerful reporting tool without learning a whole new piece of software.
Of course, the manual work of exporting CSVs and refreshing your data every week can become tedious, especially as you add more data sources. That's actually why we built Graphed . We automate the entire process by connecting directly to tools like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce. Your dashboards stay updated in real-time, and you can even build them instantly just by describing what you want to see in plain English, giving you back hours to focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets.