How to Calculate Percentage Change in Excel? (with Examples)

How to Calculate Percent Change in Excel?

To calculate the percent change in excel, we need at least two numbers from different time periods. Below is the formula to calculate the percent change in general.

Percent Change = (New Value – Old Value) / Old Value

Percent Change = New Value / Old Value – 1

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For eg:
Source: Percent Change in Excel (wallstreetmojo.com)

For example Company, ABC has achieved a revenue of USD 15 K in the previous week, and the current week revenue is USD 20 K; what is the percentage change in revenue when we compare to the previous week.

In this example, we have two numbers, i.e., Previous Week & Current Week. As per the formula, Old Value is Previous Week Number, and New Value is Current Week Number.

Percent Change = (New Value – Old Value) / Old Value

Percent Change = (20000 – 15000) / 15000
Percent Change = 5000 / 15000
Percent Change = 33.33%

The same calculation can be done by using excel simple formulas. Now we will see how to solve these problems in an excel worksheet.

Examples

You can download this Percent Change Excel Template here – Percent Change Excel Template

Example #1

Below is the revenue on year basis for the past 10 years.

So, from this data, we need to find what the year on the year percentage change in revenue is. Copy the above data to a worksheet.

Here the first-year percentage change is nil because to compare that year number, we need the previous year number, so it is not available. From the second year onwards, we can calculate the percentage difference in excel.

Apply the basic excel formulaBasic Excel Formula The term "basic excel formula" refers to the general functions used in Microsoft Excel to do simple calculations such as addition, average, and comparison. SUM, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, AVERAGE, MIN Excel, MAX Excel, LEN Excel, TRIM Excel, IF Excel are the top ten excel formulas and functions.read more as (New Value – Old Value) / Old Value.

This will calculate the % change in revenue between 2008 & 2009.

So revenue has been decreased by -15.75% from 2008 to 2009.

Copy and paste the formula to the remaining cells to see the year on percent change.

Apply the below formatting to see the negative percentage in red color.

We get the following result.

This is one way of finding percentage change year on year. Another way of finding the percentage change is between the base year (first year) and the remaining year.

For this, our formula Old Value remains the same for all the years. In this data Old Value is the year 2008.

Apply the above formula to all the remaining cells to see the percentage change between the first year and last year.

So from the first year to last year, revenue has been decreased by 20.98%. The only year revenue was increased is in the year 2016 by 10.08%, which is the highest.

Example #2

We have seen how to calculate the percentage change between two values. Now we will see how to increase the number by a certain percentage.

Assume you are working as HR, and you have received a salary increment percentage after appraisal. You have a current salary, and also you are provided with what the percentage hike is given. Using this, you need to calculate a new salary.

This is a slightly different scenario from what we have seen in the above example. Here we need to increase the number by a certain percentage as given.

Below is the formula to increase the value by a certain percentage.

New Salary = Current Salary * (1 + Percentage Increase)

Apply the same logic for the below data as well.