

Here are just some of the many tutorials on creating a waterfall chart in pre-2016 Excel: If the waterfall chart dipped below zero at one point, you needed at least seven additional series! To create a waterfall chart in Excel 2013 and earlier, you had to define additional data series (with complicated formulas) in the data table and then make them invisible in the chart.Īnd we're not talking about 1 invisible series. That's right - you did not insert a waterfall chart, you created it. Note that I used the word "creating" and not "inserting". How to create a waterfall chart in Excelīefore Office 2016 creating waterfall charts in Excel was a notoriously difficult process. 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. 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. 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.

In a waterfall chart, the first column is the starting value and the last column is the end value.

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. 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.
