How to create a waterfall chart in PowerPoint

How to create a waterfall chart in PowerPoint?

Go to the Insert menu, and click Chart. Near the bottom of the chart options is the Waterfall chart. Click OK.

What we see now is a very useful default waterfall chart, that has (in grey) a total on the left, a total in the middle, and a total on the right. We also have three floating bars that show an increase (in blue), and two floating bars that show a decrease (in orange).

⏱️TIMESTAMPS⏱️
00:00 Insert waterfall chart in PowerPoint
00:32 Change color scheme
01:03 Update waterfall chart labels
02:15 Dynamic waterfall chart
03:46 Adding or deleting bars
04:37 Copying data from Excel
06:21 Linking data to Excel

What I think we should fix straight away is the color scheme. Let’s go to the Legend, click Increase, right-click, select Fill, and change that color to green. We are going to set decreases to red. And totals to blue.

The labels at the bottom of the #waterfallchart can be updated by going to the source data sheet, which is actually a simplified Excel sheet that sits within the #PowerPoint graph. Let’s assign the label “Prior Year” to the total on the left. “Current Year” for the total in the middle, and “Next Year” for the total on the right. Let’s call the first increase “Good news #1”, then the second increase “Good news #2”, and the first decrease “Bad news #1”.
The remaining two floating bars we will call “Bad news #2” and “Good news #3”.

Each of the bars has its value displayed above or below it. If you don’t want the value displayed, then click on the data label series and uncheck the box “Value” in the Label Options section.

Let’s take a look at a practical limitation of the default waterfall chart. If the value of “Good news #1” is 40 instead of 20, then we see the green bar of “Good news #2” and the red bar of “Bad news #1” shift accordingly. However, the “Current Year” total does not update automatically, and that bar is now disconnected from the previous data. The reason for that is the values in our table are absolute numbers, which are not connected by formulas. In cell B6, we insert the formula =sum(B2:B5). Enter. In cell B9, we insert =sum(B6:B8). Enter. Now the totals are dynamic: they change if any of the floating bar values change. We can even enter -40 as the value in cell B3, and the floating bar automatically turns red to indicate a decrease.

If we want to add another floating bar, we simply click on the row in the data table that has to move up to make space. For example row 8, click control-plus, and we now have an empty row we can fill, for example with “Bad news #3” of -10. With so many columns, the data labels at the bottom no longer align nicely, let’s widen the waterfall chart a bit to correct this.

To get rid of a floating bar, you could enter a zero as its value. This keeps the column and the label in place, it now just has a value of zero. If you want it to disappear completely, then select the row, and click control-minus.

That’s what the functionality looks like when we just stay in PowerPoint. In a lot of situations, you might already have existing data, for example in Excel, that you don’t want to retype. For example, let’s take the data used in the “How to create a waterfall chart in Excel” video    • How to create a waterfall chart in Excel   , and copy that over. Excel is warning you that you are “breaking the links”, in order words you are going to paste the values only, but not the formulas.

For dramatic impact, we could adjust the scale of the Y-axis. Click twice on that vertical axis, go to Axis Options, and set the bounds to minimum 80, which will automatically adjust the maximum to 120.

If you don’t like the “Paste – Values” aspect of this, we can also link the PowerPoint waterfall chart to the Excel source data. Chart Tools, Chart Design, Edit data in Excel. In cell A2, type the “equals” sign, and link to cell O2 in the “Variance Walk” tab of the Excel file, but delete the dollar signs in front of the O and in front of the 2. Now drag the formula through cell B9.

Anytime you update the data in the Excel source table, the waterfall chart in PowerPoint will now automatically update as well.

Build it in PowerPoint, or build it in Excel, a waterfall chart is a GREAT tool for data visualization, that demonstrates how a key financial metric changes over time.

Philip de Vroe (The Finance Storyteller) aims to make accounting, finance and investing enjoyable and easier to understand. Learn the business and accounting vocabulary to join the conversation with your CEO at your company. Understand how financial statements work in order to make better investing decisions. Philip delivers #financetraining in various formats: YouTube videos, livestreams, classroom sessions, and webinars. Connect with me through Linked In!

Want to get access to bonus content, and/or express your gratitude by buying me a cup of tea? Join my channel as a member through    / @thefinancestoryteller