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Excel Pivot Table vs. Raiser’s Edge NXT Reporting

Unlocking the potential of business intelligence tools can revolutionize decision-making processes within organizations. Among these tools, the pivot table is a versatile instrument for swiftly summarizing and analyzing data, offering insights critical for informed business strategies. This post explores the advantages of pivot tables and RENXT reporting, highlighting the flexibility, portability, and ease of analysis.




From structured data elements to leveraging filters, rows, and values, readers will gain insights into optimizing pivot table reports for comprehensive data analysis. In this post, we delve into drill-down reporting features and offer practical tips and tricks for maximizing the effectiveness of pivot table summaries, ultimately empowering users to harness the full potential of their organizational data.


The Pivot Table is an intuitive approach to summing up information rapidly. You can utilize a pivot table to analyze and examine your organization’s data to make an informed decision that can impact your business's performance.


RENXT has some great dashboard reports that could resemble a pivot table summary. However, it has limited data analysis flexibility and field restrictions in dashboard reporting. With a pivot table, you can export any data element from RENXT and analyze the information in Excel format. In addition, the pivot table is portable, meaning anyone without RENXT access can view the data, granted they must have Microsoft Office Suite.


Pivot Table Reporting vs. RENXT Reporting

With the Pivot table, you have more flexibility in what you want to see through RENXT data export and how you want to structure the summary analysis table. For example, you can total, subtotal, and grand total any data sets to review.  In addition, by analyzing your data on the pivot table summary, you have slicers that give you more control of your analysis.  


RENXT Reporting provides preset dashboards and customized dashboards from the Report Builder. The dashboards are turnkey and require minimal configuration and setup. Note: subtotaling of the constituents and appeal packages is not available unless you have Insight Designer.


What You Need To Build The Pivot Report

Let’s talk about building your data elements structure in the report to analyze your organization’s performance. I found that exporting gift records is the best way to review your information at a detailed level. There are no limitations to your data export. When evaluating data, we usually analyze information about the gift types, gift amounts, campaigns, funds, appeals, packages, etc.  


Because you are exporting the gift records, you will have multiple rows of the constituent ID. Pivot counts each row separately as a different record, which could skew your summary reporting counts. Using “Distinct Count” will group the same constituent ID numbers as one record. For example, you have five rows of gift records from the same constituent. The distinct count will identify that as one group of shared records.   

Now, let’s move into the pivot table summary and graphs and build the structure of what we want to see.


The Pivot Table Summary with Charts and Graphs

Arrange the table summary structure into the following areas:

  • Filters allow you to display different values in the Pivot Table quickly. Items you select in the filter are shown in the Pivot Table and can update your graphs and charts.  The items that are not selected are hidden. 

  • Columns are what you see at the highest level within your pivot table summary table with the Grand Total. The information you see is diced into a suitable format. 

  • Rows is a statistics tool that summarizes and reorganizes selected columns and rows of data in a spreadsheet or database table to analyze your report. The data does not change the spreadsheet or database table; it allows you to view the data from different perspectives, making the same information multidimensional by twisting and turning the exact details.

  • Values in a pivot table cell will display the summarized information. The most common values are sum, average, minimum, and maximum.  The sum is the total amount of the data; the average is the sum of numbers divided by the count of the numbers.  The minimum is the smallest value, and the maximum is the largest value.  


Subtotal allows you to sum up the total amount of any headers and subheaders within the rows.  You can subtotal the data elements by placing them into the rows.   

Slicers are fantastic; you can slice anything you want if you export the field.  It gives you so much flexibility at your fingertips.  


Charts and Graphs work in conjunction with the table; as you view the data on the table, it will automatically update the charts and graphs, so be cautious about removing any information from the Charts and Graphs because it can modify your data table.  They both work in unison.  


Drill-Down Reporting Features 

The drill-down reporting features allow you to view data at any level from the pivot table summary by double-clicking in the cell.  In addition to drill-down from the table, you can expand the information from any row headers.  When you are building or reviewing data at any level, I recommend using the right-click features because many options are available to experiment with to achieve different data results.  For example, if you want to format a number to a currency or date, right-clicking on any cell will update the whole column automatically. Likewise, if you're going to subtotal at the row level, right-click on the data in the cell and choose subtotal.  It is that simple. 

 

Helpful Tips and Tricks

After you have finished building the pivot report, you can protect the sheet and workbook to prevent users from making any updates.  I also hide the “master” export table file, so users will not see it or have the ability to edit the data.  They will only see the needed information on the summary page and analyze the data from the drill-down report.  Build it and its turnkey afterward by overlaying the master table with new exports to refresh the pivot table summary report.


You can have different tables on different tabs of the pivot table workbook to analyze the same data type. For example, I have one tab for the Donor and Gift Summary, another tab for Fund Performance, another tab for Appeal Performance, and so on. In addition, PivotTable Options allows you to refresh your data when opening the file; this can help if you make any changes.  


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