If you notice that the salary calculations are completely missing in the dashboard (Salary distribution report, salary grade report and pay equity report), then the following could be the main root cause. 


ROOT CAUSE: 

If the Salary data has cells which appear to be blanks but they are actually empty strings (Excel considers them as text and not numbers and so it is not able to calculate median salary, total salary, etc. 

Excel needs all salary values to be numbers or totally blank). 


HOW TO CHECK IF THE CELL IS TRULY BLANK 
It's hard to notice the difference between an empty string and a truly blank cell visually. They all appear to be empty. 

You can check using a formula =ISBLANK(A1) where A1 is the cell we are testing. If it is truly blank the result should be TRUE.  If it is FALSE, then that is a problem. 

WHAT CAUSES THIS?
Usually this happens when we copy data from another file or source and paste them into Excel.  We need to ensure that the source is clean and also check after pasting. 

HOW TO FIX?
Before pasting the data into our template, you can identify the empty strings in Salary column and make sure they are blanks.  


Or after pasting the data into our template AND BEFORE REFRESHING DATA (if you hit the refresh, then pivot tables are updated and they will break due to having empty strings), please do the following


Note: If you have already hit the refresh button by mistake and all the pivot tables are broken, we recommend just starting again with the empty original template and enter your data again. If you need assistance, please contact us.


  • Filter the Salary column by selecting only blanks as shown in the image below. 
  • Then select all such cells in the salary column. 
  • Hit the delete key. This clears all the values and makes them truly blank.  

Now, refresh the calculations from the menu DATA ---> REFRESH ALL.


This should fix the issue with salary calculations.