Waterfall Charts

Owned by Karen Hogan (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 21, 2021
2 min read

Waterfall Chart Types are very similar to Bar Charts and Horizontal Waterfall Charts are very similar to Column Charts. They are a really good choice if you want to show the complexity that can sometimes be hidden behind cumulative numbers. Unlike like a standard Bar Chart, only the first bar which shows the initial value in your Measure and the last bar which shows the final value start at zero - all the other bars appear to be floating in between the first and last bar. When users hover over a bar, they will see the individual value represented by that bar and in addition the cumulative sum. This type of chart is usually used in Human Resources to show attrition figures and also in the Financial Industry to show credits and debits, gains and losses over the course of a single period of time.

Vertical Layout

Horizontal Layout

Waterfall charts support many of the features of the standard chart types such as:

  • Drill Down levels

  • Filters and sorting

  • Trend Lines

  • Targets

  • Chart colours

  • Y Axis zooming

  • Fixed SQL

  • Hiding Axis labels and Legend

  • Changing labels for X axis, Y axis and Legend

  • Overriding Chart Titles

They do not support:

  • Cumulation/ de cumulation

  • Displaying data as a percentage

  • Showing labels outside the chart

  • Pagination

  • Displaying as a hierarchical table