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Power BI Interview Questions

Same Period Last Year Function in Power BI

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A crucial part of the financial analysis is to know whether the business is growing or declining, so, how do we know that? By comparing it to the previous year by using Same Period last Year Function.

Problem Statement for Same Period Last Year

Show a linear chart to compare the trend between two years. As shown in the image below.

Same Period Last Year Comparison in Power BI

As you can see, we can see FY 19-20 sales by blue line and 18-19 sales by yellow line and tooltip is giving values lying on the data points based on quarters.

Let’s learn How to Make Year Wise Comparison Visual in Power BI

So, DAX in Power BI has a function as “Sameperiodlastyear” which takes the last year date itself. We will be using that to calculate Net sales for previous year.

How to add a New Measure

Step 1: Go to Home tab

Step 2: Go to calculations Selection

Step 3: Click in New Measure (Shown in the Image Below)

New Measure Ribbon

Now let’s Add Favorable Measures to Calculate Net Sales and Previous Year Sales

Firstly, we have to create measures. Two measures have been used here, “Net Sales” and “Net Sales Same Period Last Year”.

Let’s Calculate Net Sales Measure:

				
					Net Sales = CALCULATE(
        [Total Amount],
        FabricData[Category 1] = "Total Sales"
        )

It will calculate the Net sales where category 1 in fabric data is equal to “Total Sales”

Now let’s calculate the Same period Last Year Measure

				
					Net Sales Same Period LY = CALCULATE(
        [Net Sales],
        SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR(DateTbl[Date])
        )

It will take the previous year sales of the same date as net sales.

Let's Put these Measure in our Visual

Step 1: Select the Line chart Visual from Visualizations Section in power BI

Line Chart Visual

Step 2: Now Select it and you will have a blank visual on the Report View page.

Step 3: Select or drag these measures in the Y-Axis and Month wise date on the X-Axis.

Step 4: After doing the formatting we will get the following Visual in which you can compare the Net sales Same period Last Year 2018-19 and Net Sales 2019-20.

Same Period Last Year Comparison in Power BI

 

Hurray!! You have learned how to compare between two periods and create measure.

Learn More ABOUT FinanCIAL Analysis

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