Solved: Cannot compare Gsheets data to previous year - Page 2

tliebig · 07-12-2024 12:43 AM

I've got a GSheets Table tracking Orders and Revenue per Month like this:

The first column is a Date Column formatted as MMM YYYY).

When I pull the data into Looker Studio, I can set the timeframe of the report - e.g. for 2024-01-01 till 2024-06-30 - and Looker Studio correctly only shows the 2024 values in the table.

When I then try compare the data to the previous year (comparison timeframe), it does not find the delta and reports them as "-".

The table is set to:

Timeframe dimension: first column of the table
Data Dimension (granularity): YYYY MM
compare to: previous year

How come it's not pulling the data from previous year's month correctly?

dylantrose

Hey Tliebig,

It did not take me 30 seconds, I totally have not made a comparison on a table in a long time.

The issue is you are trying to compare MM YYYY to the last period. In this case, there was no last period. IE. January 2024 did not happen last year. However, January did happen last year. It happened in January of 2023.

This tool was meant to be used with text dimensions, for example if your sold 30 apples, the text dimension would be apples, so it would compare that 30 to the 30 apples sold in 2023.

I used the month operator to change your date to a month, and set the date dimension as the actual date, and it was able to do what you want. I also added a line chart, as line charts are date based and naturally show differences without the need for text dimensions.

Sincerely,

Dylan

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