What is waterfall chart in excel

Create a waterfall chart

1. Select your data.

   

2. Click Insert > Insert Waterfall or Stock chart > Waterfall.

   

   You can also use the All Charts tab in Recommended Charts to create a waterfall chart.

Tip: Use the Design and Format tabs to customize the look of your chart. If you don’t see these tabs, click anywhere in the waterfall chart to add the Chart Tools to the ribbon.

Start subtotals or totals from the horizontal axis

If your data includes values that are considered Subtotals or Totals, such as Net Income, you can set those values so they start on the horizontal axis at zero and don’t «float».

• Double-click a data point to open the Format Data Point task pane, and check the Set as total box.

  

  Note: If you single-click the column, you’ll select the data series and not the data point.

  To make the column «float» again, uncheck the Set as total box.

  Tip: You can also set totals by right-clicking on a data point and picking Set as Total from the shortcut menu.

Show or hide connector lines

Connector lines connect the end of each column to the beginning of the next column, helping show the flow of the data in the chart.

• To hide the connector lines, right-click a data series to open the Format Data Series task pane, and uncheck the Show connector lines box.

  

  To show the lines again, check the Show connector lines box.

Tip: The chart legend groups the different types of data points in the chart: Increase, Decrease, and Total. Clicking a legend entry highlights all the columns that make up that group on the chart.

Here’s how you create a waterfall chart in Excel for Mac:

1. Select your data.

   

2. On the Insert tab on the ribbon, click (Waterfall icon) and select Waterfall.

   

   Note: Use the Chart Design and Format tabs to customize the look of your chart. If you don’t see these tabs, click anywhere in the Waterfall chart to display them on the ribbon.

Waterfall charts are a powerful tool for visualizing changes in data over time. From analyzing financial statements to tracking project progress, waterfall charts can provide valuable insights into complex datasets. Excel is a popular solution for creating waterfall charts, but many users struggle to create charts that are both visually appealing and easy to understand.

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to create an impressive waterfall chart in Excel that will help you communicate your data effectively. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced Excel user, our guide provides all the necessary tips and tricks to create a stunning waterfall chart that will impress your audience. So let’s dive in and learn how to create an eye-catching waterfall chart in Excel!

Waterfall charts 101

A waterfall chart (also known as a cascade chart or a bridge chart) is a special kind of chart that illustrates how positive or negative values in a data series contribute to the total. In other words, it’s an ideal way to visualize a starting value, the positive and negative changes made to that value, and the resulting end value. In a waterfall chart, the first column is the starting value and the last column is the end value. The floating columns between them are the contributing positive or negative values.

Note: Other fun names for waterfall charts include Mario chart and flying bricks chart, because individual chart elements resemble an old arcade game. 

Some people like to connect the lines between the contributions to make the chart look like a bridge (giving us the bridge chart name), while others leave the columns floating.

Uses of waterfall charts

Waterfall charts are popular in the corporate and financial environment because they are very useful for a visualization of the positive and negative movements within a measured quantity or KPI, such as your Monthly Net Profit or Cash Flow.

Other examples of quantitative analyses, where waterfall charts are used, include:

• Visualizing profit and loss statements
• Comparing product earnings
• Highlighting budget changes on a project
• Analyzing inventory or sales over a period of time
• Showing product value over a period of time
• Creating executive dashboards

In a nutshell, use a waterfall chart whenever you want to show how a starting value increases or decreases through a series of positive or negative changes.

Tip: While the most typical waterfall chart is the one with a starting and ending value, you can also create subtotals as visual milestones in the series. These show up as full columns. For example, you might want to use Net revenue and Gross Income as two checkpoints between Gross Revenue and Net income starting and ending values.

How to create a waterfall chart in Excel

Before Office 2016, creating waterfall charts in Excel was a notoriously difficult process. Note that I used the word «creating» and not «inserting». That’s right — you did not insert a waterfall chart, you created it.

Let’s start with the process of creating a waterfall chart👇

The easiest way:

This is what your waterfall chart could look like in just a couple of clicks:

Amazing, right?

If you don’t have time to tweak the default Excel waterfall charts, as explained further in the guide, and would like to add those advanced features to your waterfall charts fast, Zebra BI for Office is just what you need. See just how easy creating a waterfall chart can be:

Compared to the other methods explained, this looks so easy it’s scary! By the way, you can do this in Office 2019 and 2021, Office 365, and Office for Mac! It’s also possible to do the same thing in PowerPoint, too.

And now, let’s check how to do it with the native Excel charts👇

Excel 2016 way:

Microsoft decided to listen to user feedback and introduced 6 highly requested charts in Excel 2016, including a built-in Excel waterfall chart.

No more templates, additional series, formulas, or tinkering with the charts. Just 2 clicks and your awesome waterfall chart is inserted.

Or is it? 🤨

While the addition of waterfall charts in Excel 2016 is a great step forward, the current functionality still leaves much to be desired.

10 steps to a perfect Excel waterfall chart

Here are some ways that can help you create better Excel waterfall charts and some things that are still missing. If you change your mind and want to do it easier, just download our free template and save your time for some better things.

1. Remember to set the totals

Let’s say we want to have this data table visualized with a waterfall chart: EBITDA of our fictional company for the years 2015, and 2016 and the individual contributions of 7 small business units to the change from 2015 to 2016.

This shouldn’t be too hard. Click inside the data table, go to the «Insert» tab and click «Insert Waterfall Chart» and then click on the chart. Voila:

OK, technically this is a waterfall chart, but it’s not exactly what we hoped for. In the legend we see Excel 2016 has 3 types of columns in a waterfall chart:

1. Increase
2. Decrease
3. Total

This is correct, but in the chart, there are no Total columns, only Increase and Decrease. The first and last columns should be Total (start on the horizontal axis) and to set them as such, we have to double-click on each of them to open the Format Data Point task pane and check the Set as total box.

You can also right-click the data point and select Set as Total from the list of menu options. 

Or, you can skip all this and use Zebra BI for Office to do the hard work for you.

Finally, we have our waterfall chart:

2. Ditch the clutter on your visualization

Data visualization best practice is to remove ALL elements from the visualization that is not absolutely necessary (if you’re interested, you can learn more about this in our free webinar: Data visualization in depth).

Similar to other Excel charts, the default Excel waterfall chart also suffers from having too much clutter. The legend, the vertical axis, and labels, the horizontal grid lines — none of them contribute to the reader’s better understanding of the data. If anything, they are a distraction.

So, let’s remove all unnecessary elements and write our key message to the title. It’s a shame that the chart title cannot be inserted automatically from a cell.

Tip: To remove the distracting chart elements, right-click on each of them and then click «Delete«.

Great, this is much better. But it required additional work that would not be required if Excel defaults were better. We’ll show you how to do it better in Zebra BI for Office.

3. Break the axis to highlight contributions

This limitation is especially noticeable in waterfall charts because waterfall charts have essentially two different types of data:

1. Totals: usually the first and last column in a series. 
2. Contributions: the floating bricks make up the “bridge” between the two totals.

A common problem is that contributions are often very small compared to totals. This is also apparent in our example (see the image above).

First, a point of order: this chart correctly visualizes the situation as the contributions really ARE that small compared to totals. Our 2016 result is essentially the same as our 2015 result.

This visualization is also completely in line with IBCS Standards.

However, users (and their bosses) are sometimes more interested in contributions than in totals and the relationship between the two.

In this case, the only viable option would be to break the vertical axis and have the totals start at some value larger than 0. Let’s say 35,000. This highlights individual contributions, but risks guiding unaware readers to false conclusions about the data.

You can again resort to using tutorials:

• http://peltiertech.com/broken-y-axis-in-excel-chart/
• http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/newsgroups/broken_y_axis/tutorial/index.html

Another, somewhat simpler option is to do the following:

• Click on the chart to select it
• Re-add vertical axis: Go to Design >> Add Chart Element >> Axes >> Primary Vertical
• «Break» vertical axis: right click on the vertical axis and click «Format Axis…«, then under Axis Options write «35000» under Bounds >> Minimum.
• Remove the vertical axis: right click on the vertical axis and click «Delete«

This is the chart we end up with:

Now the contributions are much more prominent, but there’s no obvious indication that the vertical axis does not start at zero which is really bad because the user does not draw the correct conclusion from the visualization.

4. Add relative contributions in percentages

When analyzing contributions you’re sometimes more interested in relative contributions (in percentages of the total) than in absolute contributions.

Unfortunately, if you want to do that in a default Excel waterfall chart, you’re out of luck — you’re stuck with displaying absolute contributions only. 

✔️ Look to the end of the article to see how easy this is to do in Zebra BI for Office.

5. Highlight differences between totals

Another thing that you’re not able to do in an Excel waterfall chart is to display the total difference between 2015 and 2016 in our example.

Sure, you can see in the chart that the 2016 column is higher than the 2015 column (especially now that we cut the vertical axis). But by how much? Unless you can do complex subtractions in your head, you don’t know the exact number. There’s also no way to display the relative difference in percentage.

Since this difference between totals is rather important, it’s definitely a major feature that’s missing in Excel waterfall charts.

✔️ Of course, it’s much easier to highlight the differences in Zebra BI for Office.

6. Use vertical waterfall charts

We know from the How to Choose the Right Business Chart article that horizontal charts (i.e. the charts that have a horizontal category axis) are used to display time-related data. For everything else, we should use vertical charts instead.

Waterfall charts are no exception. Strangely, in Excel 2016, there is no way to insert a vertical waterfall chart. While this feature has been requested, there’s no indication of whether it will be implemented and when.

✔️ We prepared a demonstration in Zebra BI for Office, so you can see how to create an income statement with vertical waterfall charts.

7. Add (some) subtotals

Since we’re on the subject of visualizing income statements — in a typical income statement, there are some categories that are actually sums of several other categories.

For example, you can choose to calculate a sum of all Operating Expenses (OpEx). This better visualizes the relationship between «Revenue» and «Earnings before interest and taxes» (EBIT). EBIT = Revenue — OpEx.

In a table, this is easy to do — just write a formula and you’re done.

When you create a waterfall chart in Excel? Not so much. It’s apparently so hard to do it manually that there’s not a single tutorial or template available on the internet.

You can, however, enter subtotals and designate them as such in your waterfall chart. However, you need to calculate them yourself to make sure they are correct.

✔️ You can see how Zebra BI for Office automatically creates subtotals in this handy animated gif at the end of this article.

8. Customize your chart with colors

The default color scheme in Excel could be better. Visit the Chart Design tab and open the Change Colors gallery. 

Here, you can select a color palette. You can also choose a different theme on the Page Layout tab. To adjust how the colors are used, click the Colors button and select Customize Colors at the bottom of the list. 

You can set it up to display positive values in green and negative values in red, which is a common approach in financial reporting. 

9. Turn connector lines on or off

Connector lines connect columns to show the movements in values in the chart. You can turn them on or off by right-clicking a data series to open the Format Data Series pane, and checking/unchecking the Show connector lines box.

10. Scale your charts

Finally, we arrive at one major feature that’s missing in Excel from the very beginning: scaling multiple charts.

While this problem is not limited to waterfall charts, it’s too important not to mention it here.

Making sure that all related charts in a report or dashboard are on the same scale is one of the most important concepts in data visualization.

If you don’t synchronize scales, don’t even insert the charts

All too often you see two Excel charts side by side with completely different scales. While each of them is an adequate data visualization on its own, you must make sure they are scaled once you put them side by side! Otherwise don’t even insert the charts and just leave the data in a table — or risk misleading/incorrect interpretation.

So, how do you synchronize scales of Excel charts? While the procedure is not particularly hard, it is time-consuming. It’s a similar procedure that we used to break the axis.

Say we have these two default Excel waterfall charts and we need to scale them:

The first step is to re-add Vertical Axis on both charts.

1. Click on the first chart to select it
2. Re-add vertical axis: Go to Design >> Add Chart Element >> Axes >> Primary Vertical
3. Repeat for the second chart

This is what we have so far:

Now we have to adjust the scale of the right chart to be the same as the left. Right-click on the vertical axis and click «Format Axis…», then under Axis Options write «600» under Bounds >> Minimum.

Remove the vertical axis from both charts (right-click on the vertical axis and click «Delete«) and we have our correct visualization:

OK, that wasn’t too bad. Now, what if you have a monthly report with 6 waterfall charts on it? Would you do this procedure for 6 charts every month when the data changes? I guess not.

Of course, you can automate this, but you have to use VBA to do it. If you don’t want to use VBA, maybe this article from 2012 by Jon Peltier will help you.

Some more advanced things you can do much easier

You got it so far: everything is much easier if you use Zebra BI for Office instead of native Excel charts. See what else can be done 👇

Adding variances and difference highlights

The default Excel waterfall charts do not show a very important feature that is crucial for the understanding of your performance: variances (absolute & relative) and difference highlights. In Zebra BI for Office, both features are applied automatically.

You can also control whether an increase is a positive or a negative event. We know that in some cases, like when it comes to costs, an increase is a negative development. You can simply right-click on the category where data should be inverted and select a custom calculation «Invert». This will automatically adapt the visualization to display the right context.

Another useful feature we added is the difference highlights between starting and ending values. The difference highlight is added automatically and is on by default. By going to the settings in the global toolbar, you can also switch it off.

In the previous example, you can see that the increase between EBITDA in 2020 and 2021 was 4.6k or 11.3%.

Creating an income statement with vertical waterfall charts

How about inserting a waterfall chart into an income statement? With the Zebra BI Tables for Office add-in, this is just a few clicks away.

The cool thing about this is that by glancing at the waterfall chart, you can already see how you’re performing. The calculations like «Result» and «Invert» are reflected in the waterfall chart and all categories get subtracted so that you can clearly see the contribution of each to the final result.

Small multiples with waterfall charts

How about creating up to 200 waterfall charts at once?

Here are 6 waterfall charts in a few clicks:

You only need to select a single cell in your data and insert the Zebra BI Charts for Office add-in. Use the chart slider to get to the waterfall chart, use the custom calculation «Result» on the first and last entry, and Zebra BI will do the rest.

You will see the automatically calculated variances and highlighted differences. But, most importantly, no matter how many charts you have, they are all inserted within the same visual and also automatically scaled between each other which immediately puts the data into the right perspective.

Check this short video to see how easy is to create Waterfall charts with Zebra BI for Office:

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Все чаще и чаще встречаю в отчетности разных компаний и слышу просьбы от слушателей на тренингах объяснить как строится каскадная диаграмма отклонений — она же «водопад», она же «waterfall», она же «мост», она же «bridge» и т.д. Выглядит она примерно так:

Издали действительно похожа на каскад водопадов на горной реке или навесной мост — кто что видит

Особенность такой диаграммы том, что:

• Мы наглядно видим начальное и конечное значение параметра (первый и последний столбцы).
• Положительные изменения (рост) отображаются одним цветом (обычно зеленым), а отрицательные (спад) — другим (обычно красным).
• Иногда в диаграмме могут присутствовать ещё и столбцы промежуточных итогов (серые, приземленные на ось Х столбцы).

В повседневной жизни такие диаграммы используются обычно в следующих случаях:

• Наглядное отображение динамики какого-либо процесса во времени: потока наличности (cash-flow), инвестиций (вкладываем деньги в проект и получаем от него прибыль).
• Визуализация выполнения плана (крайний левый столбик в диаграмме — факт, крайний правый — план, вся диаграмма отображает наш процесс движения к желаемому результату)
• Когда нужно наглядно показать факторы, влияющие на наш параметр (факторный анализ прибыли — из чего она складывается).

Есть несколько способов построения такой диаграммы — всё зависит от вашей версии Microsoft Excel.

Способ 1. Самый простой: встроенный тип в Excel 2016 и новее

Если у вас Excel 2016, 2019 или новее (или Office 365), то построение такой диаграммы не составит труда — в этих версиях Excel такой тип уже встроен по умолчанию. Нужно будет лишь выделить таблицу с данными и выбрать на вкладке Вставка (Insert) команду Каскадная (Waterfall):

В результате мы получим практически готовую уже диаграмму:

Сразу же можно настроить желаемые цвета заливки для положительных и отрицательных столбцов. Удобнее всего это сделать, выделив соответствующие ряды Увеличение и Уменьшение прямо в легенде и, щёлкнув по ним правой кнопкой мыши, выбрать команду Заливка (Fill):

Если нужно добавить в диаграмму столбцы с промежуточными итогами или финальный столбец-итог, то удобнее всего это сделать с помощью функций ПРОМЕЖУТОЧНЫЕ.ИТОГИ (SUBTOTALS) или АГРЕГАТ (AGGREGATE). Они посчитает накопленную с начала таблицы сумму, исключив при этом из нее выше расположенные аналогичные итоги:

В данном случае, первый аргумент (9) — это код математической операции суммирования, а второй (0) заставляет функцию не учитывать в результатах уже вычисленные итоги за предыдущие кварталы.

После добавления строк с итогами останется выделить на диаграмме появившиеся итоговые колонки (сделать два последовательных одиночных щелчка по столбцу) и, щёлкнув правой кнопкой мыши, выбрать команду Установить в качестве итога (Set as total):

Выбранный столбец «приземлится» на ось Х и автоматически поменяет цвет на серый.

Вот, собственно, и всё — диаграмма-водопад готова:

Способ 2. Универсальный: невидимые столбцы

Если у вас Excel 2013 или более древние версии (2010, 2007 и т.д.), то описанный выше способ вам не подойдёт. Придется идти обходным путем и выпиливать недостающую каскадную диаграмму из обычной гистограммы с накоплением (суммированием столбиков друг на друга).

Хитрость тут заключается в использовании прозрачных столбцов-подпорок, приподнимающих наши красные и зеленые ряды данных на нужную высоту:

Для построения такой диаграммы нам потребуется добавить к исходным данным еще несколько вспомогательных колонок с формулами:

• Во-первых, нужно разделить наш исходный столбец, выделив положительные и отрицательные значения в разные колонки с помощью функции ЕСЛИ (IF).  
• Во-вторых, нужно будет добавить перед сделанными столбцами колонку Пустышки, где первое значение будет 0, а начиная со второй ячейки формулой будет вычисляться высота тех самых прозрачных подпирающих столбцов.

После этого останется выделить всю таблицу кроме исходного столбца Поток и создать обычную гистограмму с накоплением через Вставка — Гистограмма (Insert — Column Chart):

Если теперь выделить синие столбцы и сделать их невидимыми (по ним правой кнопкой мыши — Формат ряда — Заливка — Нет заливки), то мы как раз и получим то, что требуется. 

В плюсах подобного способа — простота. В минусах — необходимость считать вспомогательные колонки.

Способ 3. Если уходим в минус — всё сложнее

К сожалению, предыдущий способ адекватно работает только для положительных значений. Если хотя бы на каком-то участке наш водопад уходит в отрицательную область, то сложность задачи возрастает в разы. В этом случае необходимо будет формулами просчитать каждый ряд (пустышки, зеленые и красные) отдельно для отрицательной и положительной частей:

Чтобы не сильно мучиться и не изобретать велосипед, готовый шаблон для такого случая можно скачать в заголовке этой статьи.

Способ 4. Экзотический: полосы повышения-понижения

Этот способ основан на использовании специального малоизвестного элемента плоских диаграмм (гистограмм и графиков) — Полос повышения-понижения (Up-Down Bars). Эти полосы попарно соединяют точки двух графиков, чтобы наглядно показать какая из двух точек выше-ниже, что активно используется при визуализации план-факта:

Легко сообразить, что если убрать линии графиков и оставить на диаграмме только полосы повышения-понижения, то мы получим все тот же «водопад».

Для такого построения нам потребуется добавить к нашей таблице еще два дополнительных столбца с простыми формулами, которые расчитают положение двух требуемых невидимых графиков:

 

Для создания «водопада» нужно выделить столбец с месяцами (для подписей по оси Х) и два дополнительных столбца График 1 и График 2 и построить для начала обычный график через Вставка — График (Insert — Line Сhart):

 

Теперь добавим к нашей диаграмме полосы повышения-понижения:

• В Excel 2013 и новее для этого необходимо выбрать на вкладке Конструктор команду Добавить элемент диаграммы — Полосы повышения-понижения (Design — Add Chart Element — Up-Down Bars)
• В Excel 2007-2010 — перейти на вкладку Макет — Полосы повышения-понижения (Layout — Up-Down Bars)

Диаграмма после этого начнёт выглядеть примерно так:

Осталось выделить графики и сделать их прозрачными, щелкнув по ним по очереди правой кнопкой мыши и выбрав команду Формат ряда данных (Format series). Аналогичным образом можно изменить и стандартные, весьма убого выглядящие, чёрно-белые цвета полос на зелёные и красные, чтобы получить в итоге более приятную картинку:

 

В последних версиях Microsoft Excel ширину полос можно изменить, щёлкнув по одному из прозрачных графиков (не по полосам!) правой кнопкой мыши и выбрав команду Формат ряда данных — Боковой зазор (Format series — Gap width).

В старых версиях Excel для такого исправления приходилось использовать команду на Visual Basic:

1. Выделите построенную диаграмму
2. Нажмите сочетание клавиш Alt+F11, чтобы попасть в редактор Visual Basic
3. Нажмите сочтетание клавиш Ctrl+G, чтобы открыть панель прямого ввода команд и отладки Immediate (обычно она расположена внизу).
   
4. Скопируйте и вставьте туда вот такую команду: ActiveChart.ChartGroups(1).GapWidth = 30 и нажмите Enter:

При желании можно, конечно, поиграться со значением параметра GapWidth, чтобы добиться нужной величины зазора:

 

Ссылки по теме

• Как в Excel построить диаграмму-шкалу (bullet chart) для визуализации KPI  
• Новые возможности диаграмм в Excel 2013
• Как в Excel создать интерактивную «живую» диаграмму

A waterfall chart is actually a special type of Excel column chart. It is normally used to demonstrate how the starting position either increases or decreases through a series of changes. The first and the last columns in a typical waterfall chart represent total values.

Waterfall Charts are used to visually illustrate how a starting value of something (say, a beginning monthly balance in a checking account) becomes a final value (such as the balance in the account at the end of the month) through a series of intermediate additions (deposits, transfers in) and subtractions (checks

What type of chart is a waterfall chart?

A waterfall chart (also known as a cascade chart or a bridge chart) is a special kind of chart that illustrates how positive or negative values in a data series contribute to the total.

Why is it called a waterfall chart?

The waterfall chart gets its name from its shape. Usually, the first bar in a waterfall chart starts from a baseline of zero, and represents the initial quantity of the measure in question.

Does Excel have waterfall charts?

Microsoft added a new Excel chart type in Office 2016: the Waterfall chart, also known as a cascade chart or a bridge chart.Navigate to the Insert tab and click the Waterfall chart button (it’s the one with the bars going both above and below the horizontal axis) and then the Waterfall chart type.

What is a waterfall calculation?

The waterfall calculations clarify how returned capital will be divided between the investors and the fund manager, and in what order. Administrators can walk CFOs through waterfall calculations, as well as provide a thorough explanation of an LP agreement, but CFOs will still want to know how to do it themselves.

What key information does waterfall chart show?

The key feature of a waterfall chart, per Rasiel, is that it shows changes not only over time, but in relation to the previous period or other milestone of measurement. Each step in the waterfall gets you to the final result and demonstrates how you got there.

How is waterfall formed?

The process of formation of waterfalls happens when a stream flows from soft rock to hard rock. This happens both laterally and vertically. In every case the soft rock erodes and leaves the hard rock as it is. Over this a stream falls.

What do you mean by waterfall?

A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf.

Is waterfall a methodology?

The Waterfall methodology—also known as the Waterfall Model—is a sequential software development process, where progress flows steadily toward the conclusion (like a waterfall) through the phases of a project (that is, analysis, design, development, testing).

How do you suggest to use a waterfall chart in the financial sector?

Waterfall chart is widely used in the Finance sector to exhibit how a net value is arrived at, by breaking down the aggregate effect of positive and negative contributions. Let’s take a simple example to understand things better. The simplest example would be an inventory audit of men’s t-shirts in a retail outlet.

How do I select a waterfall chart in Excel?

To set a total from the formatting pane, you need to either right-click and navigate to Format Data Point…, or first click on the data point you want to isolate, and navigate to Format>Format Pane>Format Data Point. Either way, it’s much quicker to simply right-click to set as total, as shown on the left.

How do you add data labels to a waterfall chart?

Creating Manual Excel Waterfall Charts
Excel 2013 onward; click the + widget button to the right of the chart > Data Labels. Excel 2007 and 2010; Chart Tools: Layout tab > Data Labels. This will add labels to the subtotal and total columns.

How do you change a waterfall chart?

Go to Design > Change Chart Type and you will also notice that the new series is not there. Generally, in the Change Chart Type window, you should be able to see all the series listed below the Waterfall image and you should be able to change the chart series type of each of them individually.

How do I create a vertical waterfall chart in Excel?

Build a Waterfall Chart in Excel using UDT Add-in
Select the range, then click on the Waterfall or Vertical Waterfall icon. If you want to calculate subtotals, please leave blank the cells. Click on the Waterfall Chart icon on the ribbon. Next, choose your style (horizontal or vertical) and click the icon.

What is a radar chart used for?

Radar Charts are used to compare two or more items or groups on various features or characteristics.

What is a waterfall financial analysis?

Waterfall Analysis – Everything you need to know.A general ‘waterfall’ is an analytical tool that visually presents the sequential breakdown of a starting value (ex: revenue) to a final result (ex: profit) by displaying intermediate values and ‘leakage’ points. This can be used by companies to track data on each step.

How do I create a stacked bar chart in Excel?

How to Make a Stacked Area Chart in Excel

1. Enter the data in a worksheet and highlight the data.
2. Click the Insert tab and click Chart. Click Area and click Stacked Area.

How do I add a secondary axis to a waterfall chart?

The waterfall chart has a bunch of series on the primary axis, but we’ll add a new series for the secondary axis. Right click the chart, choose Source Data, and click on the Series tab. Click the Add button, enter a name (“Dummy”), and for values, enter ={0}, which is an array consisting of the single element zero.

How do I change the color of a waterfall chart in Excel?

Select the chart > go to Page Layout tab > Click Colors in the Themes group > customize colors > Now you can change the colors. You will probably need to choose Red in Accent 1 and green in accent 2.

How do you add a subtotal to a waterfall in Excel?

To set a subtotal, right click the data point and select Set as Total from the list of menu options. We designed Waterfall charts so customers never have to make edits to their data in the Excel worksheet. Everything can be done in the chart.

The Definitive Guide to Creating a Waterfall Chart

Smartsheet Contributor

Kate Eby

March 4, 2016

Waterfall Charts are a popular mode of visualization, especially when it comes to analyzing and understanding change.

They are known by different names like McKinsey Charts, Cascade Charts, and even Mario Charts (owing to their resemblance with the game’s landscape).

In this tutorial, we will discuss the waterfall chart and show you how to create one in Excel.

We will also show you how to style and customize the chart according to your requirements.

What is a Waterfall Chart?

A Waterfall Chart is a tool used to visualize how a quantity or variable changes over time.

The chart basically depicts how a starting value for a variable rises and falls till it reaches the end value.

It shows positive and negative changes using different colored bars, allowing you to easily recognize a rise and fall in the value. These bars are also known as bridges.

Here’s an example of a waterfall chart showing how the revenue of a fictitious company changed over a year, from the first to the last quarter:

The starting and ending revenue is shown starting from the horizontal axis (or x-axis), while the columns in between are shown to be floating.

A blue column shows a rise in the revenue during the given quarter, while an orange column shows a fall in the revenue during the quarter.  

In earlier Excel versions, waterfall charts were not available as part of the chart template collection.

So, you had to improvise upon a stacked column chart if you needed to create a waterfall chart.

However, from Excel 2016 onwards, waterfall charts have also been added to the visualization tools, so you can create one with a few clicks, just as you would create any other chart in Excel.

Let us see how.

Consider the following data:

The above data shows a company’s quarterly revenue over a year.

Note that we specified the text (or the x-axis values) in the first column and the revenue (or the y-axis values) in the second column.

We also included the starting amount in the first row, and the ending amount in the last row.  

You will need to calculate the ending amount before creating the chart if you want to see it displayed in the chart.

For this, simply sum up the revenue amounts in the second column, as follows:

=SUM(B2:B6)

Here’s how the dataset looks after entering the formula for the ending amount:

Now that the data is ready, let us use it to create a Waterfall Chart. Here are the steps:

1. Select your data (cells A1:B7).
2. Click on the Insert tab.
3. Under the ‘Charts’ group, select the Waterfall Chart dropdown.
4. Click on the Waterfall Chart from the menu that appears.

Your Waterfall Chart should now appear in your worksheet.

Specifying the Total / Subtotal Columns

You will notice that by default, your waterfall chart displays the ending revenue as a floating column too, instead of showing it as a subtotal. 

But this is the full amount remaining, and not just another change in revenue.

This is one of the limitations of the Excel waterfall chart. We hope Microsoft fixes this issue at some point. But for now, here’s how you can work around the problem:

1. Double click on the last column.
2. Now single click it. You should see all other columns of the chart ghosted out, except for your last one, as shown below:

1. Right-click on this column and select ‘Set as Total’ from the context menu that appears.

Your last column should now turn into a subtotal column (change color to gray) and extend all the way to the x-axis, as shown below:

You can change the color of the first column too (starting revenue) in the same way, so that it is easier to differentiate between changes and full amounts.

You can add more subtotal columns in your chart in the same way.

For example, say you also want to display the total revenue in the middle of the year (at the end of the second quarter).

Your data could then be adjusted as follows:

The corresponding column in your waterfall chart could then be converted to a Total column in the same way you converted your ending revenue column:

Customizing and Styling the Waterfall Chart in Excel

You can also style your waterfall chart the same way you would style any other chart in Excel. There are a number of preset chart styling options available under the Chart Design tab (under ‘Chart Tools’).

However, if you want to style specific aspects of the chart, here are a few pointers.

Changing Chart Titles

Your chart title should be descriptive enough for people to understand what it’s about at a glance. To change the chart title, simply double-click on it and type over in the text box with the title you want.

Changing Chart Colors

Another drawback of the Excel waterfall chart is that you cannot change all negative blocks or all positive blocks in one go unless you use the preset color palette. 

But if you want to specify your own colors, you will have to manually select each column and change the colors, by navigating to Format->Shape Fill.

If you want to use the preset color palette, select any one of the columns and navigate to Chart Design -> Change Colors. Then select the color palette that you prefer.

Hiding the Connector Lines

Connectors are the lines that you will find connecting the individual columns of the waterfall chart. Excel displays these as a single gray line by default. 

However, you can also choose to hide the connector lines if you want. To hide the connector lines, follow the steps below:

1. Double click on the chart. 
2. You should see the Chart sidebar to the right of your Excel window.

1. Click on the Chart Options dropdown and select Series “Amount”.

1. Click on the Series Options tab, as shown below:

1. Uncheck the box next to “Show connector lines”.

This will hide all the connector lines from your Waterfall Chart.

Changing the Gap Size between Columns

You can also adjust the width of the gap between columns of your waterfall chart by sliding the slider next to Gap width under the Series Options tab. 

Slide it right for a bigger width and left for a narrower gap.

Adding / Removing Column Labels

The data labels provide additional information about the individual columns of your waterfall chart.

You can choose to change the position, format the labels or even remove them from your chart using the Label options.

To access the Label options, you can either double click on one of the labels of the chart or select the Series “Amount” Data Labels from the Chart Options dropdown of the chart sidebar.

Once you have the Label Options in the sidebar, select the Label Options tab, as shown below:

From here, you can adjust your labels as you see fit.

To remove the labels, simply select the Label Options category under the same tab, and under ‘Label Contains’, uncheck the box next to ‘Values’.

You can also change the label position from here.

To change the font (size, style, color, etc.) of the label, click on the Text Options tab, as shown below:

There are many other customization options available, like those for setting up your axes, gridlines, legends, etc.

These are similar to settings for any other Excel chart, so we will not go over those in this tutorial.

What are Waterfall Charts Used For?

Waterfall charts are mainly used to visualize how a quantity changes over time.

They are useful in demonstrating how one arrived at a given net value by breaking down the effect of different positive and negative influences.

As such these charts are quite helpful in a variety of applications, like:

• Analyzing company profits
• Following inventory or sales over time
• Visualizing change in employee headcount
• Demonstrating product value variations over time
• Visualizing personal cash flow
• Tracking student scores over a year

There are a whole lot of other applications that one can think of.

Although these charts were initially created to track monetary performance over time, they are increasingly being applied to a myriad of other areas and industries.

This tutorial was about Waterfall charts. We showed you what these charts are capable of and how to create, style, and customize them in Excel.

We hope it was helpful for you.

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• How to Create Org Chart in Excel?
• How to Switch Axis in Excel (Switch X and Y Axis)
• How to Make Box Plot (Box and Whisker Chart) in Excel?
• How to Create Bar of Pie Chart in Excel? Step-by-Step
• How to Delete Chart in Excel? (Manual & VBA)
• How to Create Win/Loss Sparklines Chart in Excel?