Benchmark Charts or Budget Charts are a great way to show your actual sales versus your benchmark in a graphical way, highlighting the strong v weak months.
There are a few steps but in Excel 2013 it has been made much easier to create these charts with the new Combo charts.
STEP 1: Enter your data into three columns, the month, the actual sales and the benchmark sales
STEP 2: Click inside your data and go to the ribbon and choose Insert > 2-D Clustered Column
STEP 3: Select the Benchmark series chart and Right Click and choose the Change Series Chart Type
STEP 4: This will automatically take you to the Combo chart box and you need to select the drop down for the Benchmark and select Line with Markers
STEP 5: Click on the line chart and press CTRL+1. This will open up the Format Chart dialogue box
STEP 6: Select the Line option and choose No Line
STEP 7: Select the Marker Options and choose Built In, select the horizontal line type and increase the Size to 10. You can also format the color of the line.
HELPFUL RESOURCE:
