Thanks for the reply guys. I should have given a little more information.
I have actually used both the autofilter, to check things manually, and the pivot table to generate what I needed.

There are currently 4 different status in our system - thus four columns are generated. The problem I have, which is why I was told to move away from pivot tables, is that there are actually 8 valid status and hence up to 8 columns. Given that I later use these count values to perform some further calculations, I need the table to retain a fixed format throughout the the life of the project - regardless of our progress.

I thought of adding some dummy values to the raw dump to include all possible status. Ideally, though, this should be a tool that can show our progress at the time of the dump without requiring manual modifications every time.

With that in mind, any further suggestions?