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How to Create an Executive Dashboard in Excel with ChatGPT

Cody Schneider•

Building an executive dashboard in Excel can feel like wrestling with endless formulas and pivot tables, but it doesn't have to be that way. By using ChatGPT as your personal data assistant, you can skip the headaches and build a professional, insightful reporting tool in a fraction of the time. This guide provides a step-by-step walkthrough for creating a powerful executive dashboard, leveraging AI to handle the heavy lifting.

First Things First: What is an Executive Dashboard?

An executive dashboard is a one-page report that gives leaders a high-level overview of the company's health, using key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress toward strategic goals. Instead of dense spreadsheets, it uses visuals like charts, graphs, and scorecards to make complex data easy to understand at a glance.

While plenty of fancy business intelligence tools exist, Excel remains a popular choice for good reason:

  • It's Everywhere: Nearly every business has access to Excel, so there are no extra software costs to worry about.

  • Unmatched Flexibility: You have complete control over the design, calculations, and data sources, allowing for a fully customized report.

  • Familiarity: Most people in your organization already have some level of comfort with Excel, reducing the learning curve for creation and use.

How ChatGPT Changes the Equation for Excel Reporting

Think of ChatGPT not as a tool that builds the dashboard for you, but as an expert co-pilot sitting next to you. It bridges the gap between what you want to achieve and your knowledge of Excel's more complex features. Instead of searching Google for half an hour, you can simply ask.

You can use ChatGPT to:

  • Generate complex formulas: Need to calculate month-over-month growth or combine data from two tables with a VLOOKUP? Just describe what you need, and ChatGPT will provide the exact formula.

  • Suggest the best charts: Not sure whether to use a line graph or a column chart? Ask for a recommendation based on the story you're trying to tell with your data.

  • Write VBA scripts: For repetitive tasks like formatting reports or updating charts, ChatGPT can write a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro to do it for you with one click.

  • Explain how-to steps: Confused about pivot tables or slicers? Ask for a step-by-step guide in plain English.

Step-by-Step: Building Your Executive Excel Dashboard with ChatGPT

Let's walk through the exact process, from defining your metrics to assembling the final report.

Step 1: Define Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Before you even open a spreadsheet, you must know what you need to measure. A dashboard is only as valuable as the metrics it tracks. For an executive audience, these should be high-level KPIs that tie directly to business objectives.

Common executive KPIs include:

  • Financials: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Gross Profit Margin, Net Profit, Operating Cash Flow.

  • Sales: Deal Pipeline Value, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Sales Growth MoM/QoQ.

  • Marketing: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Lead Conversion Rate, Marketing ROI.

  • Operations: Employee Churn Rate, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).

If you're unsure where to start, ChatGPT can act as a world-class business consultant.

Example Prompt: "I'm creating an executive dashboard for my e-commerce clothing brand. What are the 5 most important KPIs I should include?"

This simple prompt will give you a solid foundation and help ensure you're tracking what a C-level executive actually cares about.

Step 2: Gather and Structure Your Data

Now, it's time to collect the data for your chosen KPIs. This typically involves exporting CSV files from your various platforms (like your CRM, accounting software, or e-commerce platform) and consolidating them in one place.

The golden rule for making your life easier is to structure your data in a clean, tabular format inside a single Excel workbook. Dedicate one sheet, called something like "Raw Data," for all of this information.

Your data table should be structured like this:

  • Each column represents a distinct item (e.g., Date, Region, Product, Sales Rep, Revenue), and each row is a single record.

  • Do not use merged cells or have blank rows interrupting the data.

  • Use consistent formatting: dates in a date format, revenues as numbers, etc.

Step 3: Analyze and Summarize Data with Formulas and Pivot Tables

With clean data, you're ready to start building the calculations that will power your dashboard. This is where most people get stuck, but it's where ChatGPT shines.

Generate Perfect Formulas with Prompts

Let's say you have a summary table and you want to calculate the month-over-month (MoM) revenue growth. Instead of trying to remember the formula, just ask.

Example Prompt: "Give me an Excel formula to calculate the percentage growth between last month's value (in cell A2) and this month's value (in cell B2)."

ChatGPT will quickly respond with the formula and an explanation:

=(B2-A2)/A2

It will also likely remind you to format the cell as a percentage to display the result correctly.

Simplify Pivot Tables with Instructions

Pivot tables are essential for quickly summarizing large datasets, but they can be intimidating for new users. Instead of fumbling through menus, ask for clear directions.

Example Prompt: "How do I create a pivot table in Excel that shows my total sales revenue by region and by sales rep? My data table has the columns: 'Date', 'Sales Rep', 'Region', and 'Revenue'."

ChatGPT will give you precise, actionable steps, telling you exactly which fields to drag into the Rows, Columns, and Values areas of the PivotTable Field List.

Step 4: Create and Format Your Charts and Visuals

Now you can turn your summarized data and pivot tables into graphs and charts. Choosing the right visualization is critical for telling a clear story. If you're not a data viz expert, just ask for a recommendation.

Example Prompt: "What is the best chart type in Excel to visualize sales revenue by quarter for the last two years?"

It will likely suggest a column chart to compare discrete periods or a line chart to emphasize the trend over time. Now, you can create that chart from your pivot table data with confidence.

Automate Formatting with VBA

The single most time-consuming part of creating Excel dashboards is often formatting the charts to match your company's branding - adjusting colors, fonts, and labels. This is a perfect job for a VBA macro.

Example Prompt: "Write an Excel VBA macro that loops through every chart on the active sheet and changes the color of the first series to my brand's dark blue (#0A2F5B) and the second series to my light blue (#4E89AE)."

ChatGPT will generate a code snippet you can paste into Excel's VBA editor. With one click, your custom macro can format your entire dashboard, saving you an incredible amount of manual work.

Step 5: Design the Dashboard Layout

With all your components built, it's time to assemble them on a new, clean sheet titled "Dashboard". Effective dashboard design prioritizes clarity and ease of use.

  • Keep it on one screen: Executives need to see the big picture without scrolling. Arrange everything to fit neatly on a single page.

  • Use a logical grid: Place your most important KPI — like total revenue — at the top left, and arrange related charts together.

  • Let it breathe: Use white space to avoid a cluttered look that makes the data hard to read.

To make your dashboard dynamic, you can add Slicers, which are interactive buttons that filter your pivot tables and charts. It's the best way to let a user explore the data without breaking anything.

Example Prompt: "How do I add Slicers in Excel to my pivot charts so I can filter the entire dashboard by 'Region' and 'Year'?"

ChatGPT will guide you through connecting slicers to all your pivot tables, turning your static report into a truly interactive analysis tool.

Final Thoughts

Creating an executive dashboard in Excel becomes far less intimidating when you combine it with ChatGPT's abilities. You can generate formulas, get clear explanations, and even automate tedious tasks, saving you hours of work and allowing you to focus on what the data actually means: the insights.

While Excel and ChatGPT are a powerful combination, you still have to manually export and update the data yourself. If you're tired of downloading CSVs and pasting them into spreadsheets, we built Graphed to solve this exact problem. Our platform connects directly to your data sources - like Google Analytics, Salesforce, or Shopify - and turns hours of manual analysis into 30-second conversations. Just describe the dashboard you need in plain English, and Graphed builds and updates it for you in real time.