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Waterfall charts help to convey how an initial value is affected by a series of intermediate positive or negative values. They are particularly useful for understanding the gradual transition in value of an item that is subject to increment or decrement.

Whole columns represent the initial and the final values, while the intermediate values are expressed as floating columns. The columns are color-coded to distinguish between positive and negative values: green for positive values; red for negative; and gray for totals. These colors can be customized in the Card designer.

Waterfall charts are very flexible and can be useful for viewing product earnings, company profit, cost sheets, the number of contracts in hand, the structure of a sales pipeline, cash flow statements, or monitoring how divisional profit and loss is formed.

To learn how to add a waterfall chart to a board or worksheet, see how to add a chart card to a board and add a chart card to a worksheet.

A column chart and waterfall chart based on the same data. They detail the impact of Sales, Renewals, Assets, Expenses, Tax, and Stock on profit. Positive values are represented by green bars going upwards, and negative values by red bars going downwards.

 Unlike bar or column charts, waterfall charts display positive and negative values side by side. This layout means waterfall charts enable you to easily compare positive and negative changes at a glance.

Note that if a Waterfall chart uses percentage values, and the end total is a partial sum of the line items preceding it, no total is displayed in the Waterfall chart.

What can I use waterfall charts for?

A common use of waterfall charts is visualizing profit and loss statements, which typically comprise a series of increments and decrements, divided into subcategories.

Waterfall charts have unique configuration options available under the Axis and Data headings. These options include:

  • the Auto axis toggle that adjusts the minimum value of the y-axis. Use this option when you need to compare intermediate values that are small, relative to the initial and the final values of your chart. 
  • the Suppress zeros toggle that removes any data items with a value of 0. This streamlines your waterfall charts, making positive and negative data items more prominent.
  • the First item as total toggle that changes the first column on your chart to be the same color as a total. If the starting data item on your waterfall chart is a total, this can be useful to aid understanding.

Waterfall charts only use the first column of a view and display the view's rows as columns on the chart. To ensure synchronization with your page when building the view for your chart, you can:

  • Pivot list items to rows and line items to columns.
  • pivot line items to rows with time as a context selector.

These methods enable you to change how data is displayed on a waterfall chart by changing the time context selector.

Use a waterfall chart to answer:

  • What happened to the value of X over the past year and why?
  • What are the different values that resulted in Y?
  • Which of these factors had the largest impact on Z?

Considerations

A waterfall chart may not be the best option when:

  • You need a card to fit into a small space, as waterfall charts require a lot of horizontal space on a board.
  • Multiple data items need to be compared simultaneously, as waterfall charts can only display the first column of data in a view.

Waterfall charts don't aggregate values. You'll need a valid line item to make sure your calculations are always correct. 

Leaf levels are a key prt of aggregation. If you remove leaf levels that are used in your chart, this will impact your data display. 

Alternative chart types

Use a different type of chart if:

To learn about other types of chart, see Chart types in detail on the Charts page.

Disclaimer

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