Create a Waterfall Chart in Excel

Create a Waterfall Chart in Excel

If you have data that would fit perfectly into a waterfall chart for a useful visual, let’s get right to it! For this tutorial, we’ll use a checking account as an example.

Start by selecting your data. You can see below that our data begins with a starting balance, includes incoming and outgoing funds, and wraps up with an ending balance. You should arrange your data similarly.

Go to the Insert tab and the Charts section of the ribbon. Click the Waterfall drop-down arrow and pick “Waterfall” as the chart type.

The waterfall chart will pop into your spreadsheet.

Now, you might notice that the starting and ending totals don’t match with the numbers on the vertical axis and aren’t colored as Total per the legend. Not to worry—this is a simple fix!

Excel recognizes those starting and ending amounts as parts of the series (positives and negatives) rather than totals.

To fix this, double-click the chart to display the Format sidebar. Select the bar for the total by clicking it twice. Click the Series Options tab in the sidebar and expand Series Options if necessary.

Check the box for “Set as Total.” Then, do the same for the other total.

Now, you’ll see that those bars match up with the vertical axis and are colored as Total per the legend.