Top 7 Chart Types for KPI Dashboards

Published in

Towards Data Science

5 min readOct 10, 2019

KPI has become an important assessment system and methodology for various business organizations, and it runs through all kinds of business activities. How to use the appropriate visual charts to present actual results and key indicators to achieve real-time monitoring has also been the focus of business analysis, and even various business intelligence systems.

In today’s article, I have summarized 7 chart types commonly used in KPI dashboards, and I hope they will be useful to you.

(Note: All the charts and dashboards in this article are made with the data visualization tool FineReport, and the personal download is completely free.)

1.Digital Text

The simplest way to show KPIs is to list the numbers directly in text form. The advantage is that it is very intuitive. And it’s especially suitable for displaying core indicators such as total sales, turnover, total profit of financial analysis, gross profit margin, etc.

The usage of this chart type is simple and straightforward. But it is not recommended to list multiple data, because it’s difficult to compare and there is lack of relevance between data. Besides, different colors can be used as a distinction in the style of the digital text.

2. Word Cloud Chart

The word cloud chart is a form of visual display of data frequency. It can visually highlight the “keywords” with high frequency of occurrence, forming a “keyword cloud layer”, thus filtering out a large amount of text information, so that viewers can grasp the key points at a glance.

For example, when you report your work, you can express the most prominent points of the year’s work with a few highlighted words, forming a “2019 keyword cloud”.

3. Instrument Panel

The instrument panel can be used for progress analysis of indicator values to show the comparison between the plan and the actual results. And for simultaneous display, you can use multiple instrument panels.

In addition to the dials, there is also a percentage instrument panel, similar to a doughnut chart. The advantage of this chart type is that the range and size of the data can be clearly seen, but the inability to observe the trend change is the biggest drawback.

4. Scatter Plot

The scatter plot is used to show the relationship between different data points and to compare trends over uneven time periods. The effect is shown below.

5. Multi-series Line Chart

Multi-series line chart is used to view the trend of indicators in the same area, which can visually see the trend comparison. A line chart with KPIs can display multiple data series at the same time and automatically calculate the difference rate.

6. Combination Chart

A combination chart is a combination of multiple charts, such as a line chart, a column chart, a pie chart, etc.

Let’s look at an example of a combination of a line chart and a stacked column chart.

In the combination chart below, the order quantity and the reorder quantity are accumulated and compared with the stock quantity. If the accumulated total order quantity is greater than the stock quantity, it indicates that the replenishment is required.

7. Dynamic Chart

At last, I will focus on the dynamic charts that are often used in the KPI dashboard. The KPI charts described above are all basic charts. In fact, to make a clear and cool KPI dashboard, you must use more advanced dynamic charts to make your key indicators more prominent and more eye-catching.

Now, let’s take a look at several dynamic charts of FineReport.

Catalog gear

Time gear

Dynamic indicator card

Luminous dashboard

GIS point map

Having said that, you may want to take a look at the practical application of these charts in the KPI dashboard. So I found a few dashboard templates in FineReport Demo for your reference.