80/20 Rule Template (Pareto) (Excel XLSX)

If you are attempting to make key decisions that affect your business, it is important to understand what to prioritize. A simple template can make this easy to organize rather than trying to do it in your head or on a scrap paper / workbook. This template was built to conduct various pareto analysis work, which is just a fancy name for the 80/20 rule.

It just means that often times most of the effects are a result of a small number of causes. It is not always exact and there can be scenarios that vary greatly from 80/20, but a good way to explain this is to say something like 80% of our revenue comes from 20% of our clients. You could also say that 80% of our inefficiencies come from 20% of our machines. Being able to quantify and visualize these dynamics is helpful for nearly any business.

Some of the common industries pareto analysis is used in would include manufacturing, healthcare (monitoring patient complaints, sources of medical errors, or types of diseases that account for the most cases), and generally trying to understand the biggest sources of profitability for businesses. The use cases are basically endless with this kind of analysis.

To make the template more valuable, I included conditional formatting and automated ordering logic, so the user doesn't have to manually sort their data. The data can be input in any order and the model will put it from greatest to least (so the charts look nice) and on the dashboard tab there will be green highlights that show how many different cause types accounted for 80% of the effects.

The model comes with six prebuilt configurations so you can perform analysis on a range of areas and see the results all in one tab. Simply start inputting your data in the light-yellow cells and that's all you need to do. You can update the text on the charts / values based on your specific situation.

Instructional video included in the download.