Waterfall Charts
The two charts below show the S&P 500 Net Income by Sector for both 2008 and 2009 and recently appeared in BusinessWeek. What really caught my attention is that these column charts are a little bit like a waterfall with the only difference being that these start from zero. Prior to using the Waterfall chart utility, I created these by hand. The workaround to get a hidden or shaded set of bars is more difficult than it really needs to be.
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Below you will see my versions of the charts using the same data and Excel. I didn’t include the gray shaded series because I do not think that it adds any value. Also, I do not have the text box calling out the title and final value because there is a column at the end that shows what the value is upon finish.
Below is the 2009 version in Excel. Another aspect to this chart that I do not like, even in my version, is the x-axis label being set at a 45 degree angle. The angle of the labels along with the removal of the gray shaded bars makes it a little difficult to align the label with the value up the chart. This was not a default option, but something that I changed.
What I really wanted to share was the layout of my data before clicking on the Waterfall chart utility. All I had was labels and values for each year as shown below. The chart utility did all of the work by setting up a table with all of the data needed to construct the chart properly. Here are the steps I went through:
- Setup the data in a table
- Click on the PTS Charts tab in Excel’s ribbon
- Select Waterfall Plot
- The range of data is already populated if you were within the data before clicking on the utility
- Change any of the options (I used the defaults)
- Click OK and that’s it.
I did change some of the default formatting options after the waterfall charts were created to get them more aligned with the charts at the top of this post. Overall, I was very pleased at the ease of creating these charts with the utility. A waterfall chart is a great option when showing how different segments make up the total. For example, an Executive could use a waterfall chart to show how each of the business segments impact the revenue or profit numbers like, A/R, Cost of Goods, Transportation, Fix Costs, etc..
If you are interested in this utility, visit the PTS site by clicking here.
Note: This utility is an affiliate product where Support Analytics will receive a small commission if this product is purchased via one of the links.
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March 1st, 2010 at 7:37 am
Tony -
Thanks for reviewing my product. I have worked hard to make it easy to use, because I want even CEOs to be able to use it
In the near future I hope to add an important feature that you hinted at: the ability to change the default formatting options for charts created by the Waterfall Chart Utility.
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