How to create a goal chart

If you're assigning this to your students, copy the poster to your account and save. When creating an assignment, just select it as a template!

Table of Contents Show

Make a Goal Chart
How To Create A Goal Line On A Chart
Create Goal Line
About the Author
What are the 3 types of goals examples?
What is the best way to track your goals?

Goal charts are fantastic for tracking goals, whether they be student goals or class goals. Fundraising? Reading a lot of books? Make a goal chart for it! Goal charts can also be used to help keep track of time during the day or school year. Use the iconic goal thermometer or select another item to fill!

Make a Goal Chart

To make a goal chart, choose a template above!

Once you're in the Storyboard Creator, click on any of the elements on the template to change them to fit your needs. Add new images and words to make your poster pop! Don't forget to change the colors or add more! Make the poster your own. When you're done, just hit "Save & Exit"! You can print off your poster from the next screen, or it will be saved to your account.

Happy Creating!

*(This Will Start a 2-Week Free Trial - No Credit Card Needed)

https://www.storyboardthat.com/create/goal-chart-templates
© 2022 - Clever Prototypes, LLC - All rights reserved.
StoryboardThat is a trademark of Clever Prototypes, LLC, and Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Improve Article

Save Article

Excel is a powerful tool for data visualization and data management which can be used to store, analyze, and create reports on large data. Data can be visualized or compared using different kinds of plots in excel such as line charts, bar charts, etc. Goal line is also called a target line. It helps show actual performance against your expected target. For example, you may want to view actual sales against the target sales in order to understand how the business is performing against expectations.

How To Create A Goal Line On A Chart

For the purpose of demonstration, we will use the below table values which have monthly sales with target sales of that month,

First, we will create a regular chart say a column chart.

Steps to create a column create a column chart

Step 1: Select the data

Step 2: Click on the ‘Insert’ tab and select column chart.

Step 3: A column chart will get created.

Create Goal Line

Step 1: Right-click on any bar and select the ‘change series chart type’ option.

Step 2: In the change chart dialog box, make sure the Combo category is selected.

Step 3: Click the dropdown of the ‘Target sales’ field.

Step 4: Select the Line option.

Step 5: Press Ok.

Output

In the above graph, the Orange line represents the goal line.

Get The Completed Workbook

In a previous post I showed you How To View Actual Versus Target With A Thermometer Style Chart and in this post we’re going to look at how to display similar information in a gauge chart. Excel doesn’t have a gauge chart option, but we can use a pie chart to create something that looks like a gauge. In this example we’ll chart the current amount raised against a fundraising goal.

We’ll need to set up a few fields in our spreadsheet to start.

Current – This will be the current amount that’s been raised so far to date.
Fundraising Goal – This is the goal amount of the fundraising campaign.
Percent Complete – This will be a formula =Current/Fundraising Goal and represents the percentage of the goal raised to date.
Complete – This will be the portion of our pie chart that will represent our percent complete and will be given by the formula =MIN(50%,Percent Complete/2).
Incomplete – This will be the portion of our pie chart that will represent our percent incomplete and will be given by the formula =50%-Complete.
Unused – This will be a constant 50%. We want our chart to look like a half circle, so 50% of our pie chart will not be used. We will end up hiding this part of the chart by formatting it with no fill and no outline.

Insert a pie chart.

Highlight the data for the complete, incomplete and unused percentages. They will add to 100% so that we have a full pie.
Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon.
Select the small Pie Chart icon from the Charts section.
Select the 2D Pie Chart.

The result will not automatically look like a gauge, we will need to make some adjustments.

We can change the title of the chart to something more meaningful like Fundraising Progress. Later we can also move it below the gauge.
Delete the legend by clicking on it and pressing Delete.
Right Click on the pie and select Format Data Series. You should see a new window pane with the heading Format Data Series on the right hand side. Change the Angle of first slice to 270 under the three vertical bar icon.
Left Click on the 50% pie slice and you should see the Format Data Series change to Format Data Point. Under the paint can icon change the setting to No fill and No line. Similarily, you can change the colour of the two other slices as desired.

Add some labels such as 0% and 100% as gauge marks using a text box and we now have something that looks like a gauge that’s been constructed out of a pie chart! It’s a cool pie chart hack that’ll add some style to your dashboards.

About the Author

John is a Microsoft MVP and qualified actuary with over 15 years of experience. He has worked in a variety of industries, including insurance, ad tech, and most recently Power Platform consulting. He is a keen problem solver and has a passion for using technology to make businesses more efficient.