This is a guest post from Aaron Henckler.
Waterfall charts are great, especially for visually showing the contribution of parts to a whole. While there are several tutorials on how to make a waterfall chart online the end products of these tutorials rate low on the visually appealing scale.
The principle problem with these charts is the separation between the elements of the waterfall. They are always either pushed together (Example A) or left apart, without element connectors (Example B):
Example A
Example B
Many users of waterfall charts employ the separated (default) version (example B) opting to add in element connectors manually via Insert>Shapes>Line on the Excel tool bar. The frustration with this approach is that all too often the values of the chart elements will need to be updated or changed forcing user to manually readjust each of their connector lines in turn.
With some simple charting trickery in Excel 2007 one can easily make a waterfall chart with connectors that will update automatically as element values are changed.
A Better Waterfall Chart
Steps to Building a Better Waterfall Chart
List of data series (columns) needed for your chart:
- Horizontal Axis Labels: in the example above North, East, South and West.
- Base Values: What your element values will “sit on.” Essentially this is the white space beneath each charted element shown above.
- Element Values: the meat and potatoes of your chart – the value of your elements as you want them to appear (above these are 40, 30, 20, 10 and 100).
- Label Spaces: This is optional but it allows you to place the value of you data elements on top of their respective bars (this avoids the use of the annoying Label Position options available after one has used Add Data Labels).
- Label Connectors: This is the key item needed to create the chart as shown above. You will need one column (series) for each of the data elements (excluding one for the total). For the chart above, four label connector series are needed.
Step 1: Enter all of the required series in a worksheet:
- Horizontal Axis Labels – self explanatory
- Base Values – A running total of the subsequent Element Values (Column C). Whereas nothing proceeds North in the example above leave its base value blank. Do the same for Total.
- Element Values – These are whatever numbers you want to highlight in your chart. These are represented by the blue column segments in the above chart.
- Label Spaces – Again this is optional. These will eventually hold text labels for the Element Values (Column C). The numbers here should all be the same and be some number about 1/4 to 1/3 the value of your lowest Element Value.
- (to H. ) Connectors – Connectors 1 to 4 correspond to Axis Labels North to West in the example above. In the respective Connector column make the cell at the row corresponding to the related Axis Label equal to the sum of Column B + Column C (Base Value + Element Values). Enter the same value for the cell beneath.
Step 2: Chart data and adjust
1. Select your data, here A2:H6, and go to Insert>Charts>Column>2-D Column>Stacked Column>OK (to exit). Your chart should look like this:
2. Switch column and row data by right-clicking within the chart and going to Select Data…>Switch Row/Column>OK (to exit). Chart should now look something like this:
3. The top colored column element in each column (purple, aqua, orange and baby blue, respectively) is what will become that Element Value’s connector. To convert to these columns to connectors, in turn, right-click on the series (the first one is the purple column element) and go Change Series Chart Type…>Line>Line>OK (to exit). Repeat this process for the other connector column elements (aqua, orange and baby blue). After this step your chart should look like this:
4. Follow this up by formatting each connector in turn. Right-click on the connector and go Format Data Series…. Consider making the Line Color>Solid Line>Color black, Line Style>Width .25 pt and Line Style>Dash Type>Square Dot. Play around with these options as you see fit to get the best look. Again, do this for each connector.
5. Remove grid lines (optional), delete the Legend (necessary). Your chart should now look like this:
6. Go into you Base Values series (blue column element in the chart above) and eliminate the color fill and borders: right-click on a blue column element and go Format Data Series….>Fill>No Fill and Border Color>No Line>Close (to exit).
7. Format your Element Values series (red above, using same process in Step 6 to change the fill color and add a border.
8. Right-click on your Label Spaces series and go Add Data Labels…. Don’t worry about the value on the labels for now, they’ll be changed in the next step. Follow this up by formatting the Label Spaces series just like how the Base Values series was formatted (in Step 6). Make it so there is no fill and there are no borders. This is what you should now have:
9. All that remains is to convert your labels to the values of the Element Values. To do this for each label: click on the specific label twice (so that only the box for that label appears, as below).
Click a third time on the edge of the box that appears and then type the equals sign “=”. Now go back to your data table and click on the cell of the Element Value that you want appear in the label. Then press enter. This links the value of the label to the Element Value (if your Element Value ever changes so too will the text in this label). Repeat this for the other data labels in turn. The result is your Better Waterfall Chart:
Download the Waterfall Chart Template:
Please download the waterfall chart template from here [.zip version here]
Final Thoughts
I hope you will agree that this waterfall chart is more visually appealing that the examples at the start of this tutorial. In addition to a more professional look this waterfall will fully update (step heights, labels, connector positions) automatically whenever you change your Element Values. While the process of implementing this form of waterfall chart may at first seem cumbersome it can be quickly implemented with some practice and is a great item to have in your charting toolkit. Enjoy.
Note from PHD:
- Thank you so much Aaron. You have taught us a very valuable tutorial. I really appreciate your effort in putting this together.
- If you need to make a lot of waterfall charts, I recommend trying Jon Peltier’s Waterfall Chart Utility.
Hello there, Reader: If you like this waterfall chart tutorial, please drop a note of thank you to Aaron through comments.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.