Power Pivot Principles: PREVIOUSMONTH Comparison

Welcome back to the Power Pivot Principles blog. This week, we are going to compare monthly data using yet another approach.

If you have read my blogs on DATEADD and PARALLELPERIOD, you must be aware that I have been outlining options to look at monthly changes in Sales. This week, I am here to offer you another method of performing the same analysis. Let’s pull the monthly Sales data in a table to start the process once again:

To analyse month on month performance, I will compare results with the preceding month, using the PREVIOUSMONTH function.  The syntax is as follows:

I can simply use this and create the following measure:

Now, I simply pull this measure into my PivotTable to generate the following results:

Now that’s the third option after generating the same results using DATEADD and PARALLELPERIOD. It’s up to you to choose the one you prefer. Spoiler alert: I will be showing you another alternate next week for the same analysis. I bet you can’t wait…

That’s it for this week!


Come back next week to see how we use the disconnected table for performing a sensitivity analysis by staying tuned for our next post on Power Pivot in the Blog section. In the meantime, please remember we have training in Power Pivot which you can find out more about here. If you wish to catch up on past articles in the meantime, you can find all of our Past Power Pivot blogs here.