Presenting Financial Plan as an Interesting Visual, not just Excel Block [PowerPoint Q&A]

This is a problem I’ve experienced a lot in my projects – How to make financial charts more visual? How to enhance a table copied from Excel into PowerPoint?

A few quick tricks I’d suggest:

After copying Excel table into PowerPoint, apply colors of the table cells or rows to distinguish more and less important data.

1. Use colors to show data importance

Usually the rows with Totals, EBITDAs, Profit summaries are more important ones than detailed financial data of specific costs category.

Use high contrast colors, consider using negative color coding (e.g. dark blue background and white text) for the key table rows.

end-year financial summary ppt table

2. Converting tables to other forms

By other forms I mean data plots or other diagrams. Data charts are quite obvious form of table visualization, in case you have quantitative data there. If you have a time you can redesign default charts to something more visually original and attractive like those below.

wykresy

In case you have a financial plan, that covers a sequence of points in time you can use a financial timeline infographics rather than a classical table .

szkolenie powerpoint infografika diagram roadmap

3. Make columns graphical

Add graphical elements to column headers – a specific icon if you have a space. Or make header as a separate shape over the table

tabele graficzne ppt
tabelki powerpoint szkolenie wizualizacja danych

4. Show where to look in a table

Highlight the key financial values – e.g. use a hand drawn arrows or swoosh to circle the key data. You can make them using PowerPoint pen tool, simple shape or some shapes.

Resources to learn more

For practice, check our slide design training

For graphical resources

Books for further self-study and reading

  • Say if with a Charts, Gene Zelazny
  • Slide:ology, Nancy Duarte

Hope that gives you some ideas for start.

PS. If you have any slide design related question, share in comments or contact me directly, I’d love to help.

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