How to Analyze Spend Reporting Data in Excel?

Are you getting the expected returns from the money you invest into your business?

Spend reporting gives you the data you need to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

Spend reporting involves tracking the money you spend while running your business. It’s a way of understanding where your money is going and why. You can identify areas of wastage and make changes to improve your bottom line.

Assume you head procurement for a food distribution business. You are responsible for monitoring the costs of purchasing food and supplies. Consequently, ensure that you are getting the best deals.

You can use spend reporting to track the costs of food and supplies. Then compare them to market prices, and identify areas of cost negotiations to strike the best deals.

It’s no secret that managing and analyzing spend data can be a challenge. Fortunately, tools are available to help you quickly and easily visualize and analyze your data.

Table of Content:

1. What is Spend Analysis?
2. Why is Spend Analysis Important?
3. Types of Spend Analysis
4. How to Conduct Spend Analysis in Excel?
5. Benefits of Spend Analysis
6. Wrap Up

What is Spend Analysis?

Spend analysis comprises assessing and analyzing a business’s spending behaviors and patterns. It aids in identifying areas for cost savings.

Spend analysis is useful since it employs data analytics and reporting to aid in formulating strategies. These strategies help to reduce expenses and maximize profits.

Spend analysis helps organizations understand their spending patterns and identify potential vendor relationship issues. Consequently, develop strategies for improved budgeting and cost management.

Why is Spend Analysis Important?

• To Monitor Spending Patterns

Spend analysis gives you a bird’s eye view of your spending patterns. Thus, you can determine which areas are over or under-utilizing funds. Consequently, develop strategies to fix the problem areas.

• To Identify Areas of Wastage

Spend analysis evaluates the cost-effectiveness of various functions. This helps to identify areas of wastage and the necessary improvements to reduce expenses.

• To Improve Efficiency

Spend analysis helps to improve efficiency by aiding in the identification and elimination of unnecessary costs. It also identifies areas where you can better allocate money to maximize the benefits of resources available.

• Budgeting

Spend analysis is an integral tool for budgeting and forecasting. You can better anticipate future financial needs and create a realistic budget.

• To ensure Compliance

Spend analysis is an invaluable tool for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. You can identify areas of potential risk or fraud. Also, you can identify vendors not following proper procedures or rules. This helps to ensure that funds are only spent per the company’s policies and procedures.

Types of Spend Analysis

1. Item Spend Analytics

Item spend analytics looks at the price of individual items bought. It provides insights into the priciest items and those with the most significant influence on cost. It also offers guidance on where to concentrate your cost-cutting efforts.

2. Contract Spend Analytics

Contract spend analytics looks at the cost of contracts entered into by a business. It provides insights into the most expensive contracts and those generating the most value. This way, you can identify contracts not providing value that can be renegotiated or canceled. It also provides insights into potential areas for improvement in the contract process.

3. Category Spend Analytics

Category spend analytics looks at the cost of goods and services hierarchically grouped into categories. It provides insights into the most expensive categories and those providing the most value. It can also shed light on potential areas for improvement in the purchasing process.

4. Supplier Spend Analytics

Supplier spend analytics assesses the quality of supplier services and performance. Thus, identify the best suppliers for a given product or service. Consequently, reduce costs through smarter supplier contracting decisions.

5. Tail Spend Analytics

Tail spend analysis is a powerful strategy for increasing procurement effectiveness. It aids in identifying and controlling the “tail” of your spending. Tail spend is a minor fraction of the overall spend that is often overlooked. Tail spend analytics can help find areas for savings, cut expenses, and improve value from the procurement process.

6. Payment Term Spend Analytics

Payment term analytics is crucial for understanding a company’s purchase-to-pay (P2P) practices. It also keeps track of the purchases made within a specific time frame. This information helps to develop more effective payment terms and to bargain for better deals with vendors.

How to Conduct Spend Analysis in Excel?

Excel is an effective and flexible tool for managing your finances. You can examine your spend data with the spreadsheet to help you make wiser financial decisions.

However, data analysis in Excel can be challenging.

This necessitates the use of extra tools to simplify this analysis.

This is where ChartExpo comes in handy.

ChartExpo is an Excel add-in that helps you quickly and easily visualize your spending. You can categorize your spending and create insightful charts and graphs effortlessly.

Why ChartExpo?

Benefits of Using ChartExpo

• Easy to use: Thanks to its intuitive UI, creating visualizations with ChartExpo requires no coding or technical expertise.
• Affordable: ChartExpo has a free 7-day trial to test the features before subscribing to its $10 monthly plan. This makes it an excellent option for businesses on a budget.
• Flexible: ChartExpo has a wide range of features and customization options. Thus, you can create appealing visualizations to represent your data effectively.

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

1. Open your Excel application.
2. Open the worksheet and click to open the “Insert” menu.
3. You’ll see the “My Apps” option.
4. In the office Add-ins window, click “Store” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
5. Click the “Add” button to install ChartExpo in your Excel.

ChartExpo charts exist in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Utilize the given CTAs to install the tool you prefer. Then make eye-catching visuals with just a few clicks in your go-to program.

Example

Assume you have spend data based on departments and categories, as shown below.

Total Spend	Department	Category	Spend Amount($)
Total Spend	Marketing	Advertising	20,000
Total Spend	Marketing	Events	15,000
Total Spend	Marketing	Collateral	30,000
Total Spend	Marketing	Salaries	50,000
Total Spend	Operations	Rent	10,000
Total Spend	Operations	Utilities	8,000
Total Spend	Operations	Supplies	15,000
Total Spend	Operations	Salaries	40,000
Total Spend	Sales	Salaries	30,000
Total Spend	Sales	Commissions	6,000
Total Spend	R&D	Salaries	40,000
Total Spend	R&D	Contractors	20,000
Total Spend	Admin	Salaries	30,000
Total Spend	Admin	Legal	15,000
Total Spend	Admin	IT	10,000

Use a Sankey Chart visualization to present this kind of data effectively. Follow through as I show you how to create a Sankey Chart in Excel with ChartExpo.

• To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel.
• Now Click on My Apps from the INSERT menu.

• Choose ChartExpo from My Apps, then click Insert.

• Once ChartExpo is loaded. Click on “Sankey Chart” from the list of charts.

• Click “Create Chart From Selection” button after selecting the data from the sheet, as shown.

• The Sankey Chart will look like as follows.

• If you want to have the title of chart, click on Edit Chart, as shown in the above image.
• To change the title of the chart, click on the pencil icon that is available very next to Chart Header.
• It will open the properties dialog. Under the Text section, you can add a heading in Line 1 and enable the Show option. Give the appropriate title of your chart and click on Apply button.

• To change the node color, click on the pencil icon available with the node. Expand the Node properties and change color from the Node Color property. Click on the Apply button.

• Click the highlighted pencil icon to add the dollar sign to the numerical values. Expand the ‘Symbols‘ properties and add the Prefix value (e.g., $ sign). Click the Apply button.

• For saving changes click on Save Changes. This will persist the changes.

• Final chart will look like as follow.

Insights

• Level 1 shows the amount spent in total is $339,000.
• At level 2, the size of each node displays the amount of money spent by the departments. The sales department made the lowest expenditure, while the marketing department had the highest.
• Level 3 analyzes the data by category;
• The largest amount was spent on Salaries, with a total of $190,000, 50% of the total costs.
• The smallest amount was spent on Commissions, at $6,000, representing 1.7% of the expenses.

Benefits of Spend Analysis

• Increased Visibility

Spend analysis helps to increase visibility into where money is being spent. You can gain a better understanding of your spending habits and identify areas of potential savings. With this increased visibility, you can make improvements and streamline processes. Consequently, ensure the usage of funds most efficiently and effectively.

• Improved Budgeting

You can craft more effective budgets by understanding allocation and how they are used. With improved budgeting, you can reduce costs and increase profits while maintaining efficiency in money usage.

• Cost-Saving

Spend analysis explains the business’s overall spending and purchasing power. This insight can help you make better decisions when choosing suppliers and negotiating contracts. Consequently, it leads to more cost-effective outcomes.

• Improved Supplier Performance

By analyzing supplier data, you can improve relationships with suppliers. Thus, you can more effectively address supplier issues and increase supplier satisfaction. You can also identify discrepancies between the promised and received services from suppliers. This can help ensure that you receive the services you have paid for. Therefore, ensure efficient supplier performance.

• Improved Efficiency

Conducting a spend analysis helps to ensure you get the most out of your investments. You can adjust your strategies to maximize the return on your investment by finding areas of inefficiency. Thus, ensure that your company uses resources as efficiently as possible.

FAQs:

What is spend reporting?

Spend reporting is tracking and documenting the expenditure of an organization or individual. It involves gathering data regarding the amount of money spent on various items, services, or activities. Then organizing it for clear visibility into where money is going.

What are the 4 stages in spend analysis?

1. Data gathering: Getting financial information from all relevant sources.
2. Data cleansing: Scrutinizing it to ensure accuracy and reliability.
3. Data categorization: Classifying the data.
4. Data analysis: Examining the information to spot spend patterns, trends, and discrepancies.

What should a spend analysis include?

A thorough review of a business’s spending should be part of spend analysis. This includes the amount spent on each product or service. It should also have a forecast of the future explaining how to fix your spending to improve performance.

How can I analyze spend reporting data in Excel?

ChartExpo is a powerful tool for analyzing spend reporting data in Excel. It allows you to create insightful charts and graphs of the data. This enables you to spot trends or anomalies. Consequently, identify problems or opportunities.

Wrap Up

Spend reporting involves identifying and understanding where your business is spending money. It helps you to identify areas for cost savings. Ultimately, contribute to improving efficiency and ROI.

As we have seen, spend analysis has various types, each having specific applications and benefits. The choice of the ideal type depends on your objectives.

We have discussed the basics of spend reporting and learned how to analyze the data. You have what it takes to analyze spend reporting data in Excel.

However, it can be challenging to analyze spend reporting data in Excel.

Worry less. ChartExpo comes to your rescue.

With ChartExpo for Excel, you can extract actionable insights from your spend reporting data in no time. Then, use the insights to make smart decisions to drive savings and increase efficiency in your business.

How?

ChartExpo allows you to create insightful visualizations effortlessly. It’s easy to use, flexible, affordable, fast, and accurate.