In this tutorial you will learn how to calculate the percentage of total sales in Excel. Let’s assume you are a seller of different products to market. You want to find out what percentage every single product contributes to the total sales.
Scope
Calculation of percentage of total sales is important for understanding the product portfolio. We can identify the top contributing products and least contributing products. In most of case, less number of products contributes more to the business which is commonly known as 80-20 rule (80% business is generated from 20% items).
Example
In this example, there is the data of sales value of different products in the month of January 2024. Here, the requirement is to calculate the % of every single product’s sales to the total sales.
Steps to Calculate Percentage of Total Sales
- Calculate the Total Sales for the month using SUM function.
- Use formula (Individual Sales / Total Sales). Lock the total sales cell by using $ symbols.
- Apply % formatting in the result cell.
- Drag and fill the formula down for other products.
In the example above, the percentage of total sales for every single product is calculated. Whatever is the size of your data, you can follow the same formula to calculate this. The % of total is also known as contribution of every product to the total. By calculating this, we can identify which are the products having higher contribution to the business.
In the example, the highest contributing product is Laptop PC. This is the number one product for the business. If we focus on this product and increase the sales quantity, it will generate large additional sales revenue. If we look into top 3, Laptop PC, Desktop PC and Washing Machine are contributing almost 72% to the total business. By calculating the percentage of total, we can analyze our product portfolio and take business decisions.
