You are currently viewing How to create a Waterfall Chart in PowerBI

How to create a Waterfall Chart in PowerBI

Loading

In this blog, we’ll learn How to Create Waterfall Chart in PowerBI. Firstly, we have to understand what it is and when should we use it.

Introduction to Waterfall Chart in PowerBI

Waterfall Chart in PowerBI is used to visualize the increase or decrease of data points in a data series as a waterfall view. It is mostly used for tracking changes over time or categories.

Dataset description

Supermarket sales dataset is used in this blog. It is available on the Kaggle platform.

You can access the dataset here.

Description: In this dataset, there following features/columns:

Invoice IDUnique Identifier for each Invoice
BranchThere are four branch Site
CityCity where transactions occurred
Customer TypeType of Customer – Member or Normal
GenderGender – Male, Female
Product LineType of Product
Unit PricePrice of a Single Unit of Product
QuantityTotal Quantity of Product Sell in a Single Purchase
Tax 5%5% of Tax on Cost of Goods Sold
TotalTotal Amount of Items without Tax
DateDate of Sale
TimeTime of Sale
PaymentMode of Payment
COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)Total Amount of Items with Tax
Gross Margin PercentageTotal Profit in Percentage
Gross IncomeTotal Profit
RatingRaing of the purchase in range of 1-10

Sample of Data:

Steps to Create Waterfall Chart in PowerBI

Step1: Open your PowerBI Desktop on your Device

Step2: Click on Get Data button in Home Ribbon and select Text/CSV.

Step3: Open Prompt box will be open to select your text or csv file.

Step4: After selection of dataset, It will pop up a window for Load OR Transform Data. Click on Load to use data on PowerBI.

Step5: In the following picture, data has been loaded successfully.

Proceeding to Working Steps:

Step6: Select Waterfall Chart from Visualizations Section (Right Hand Side).

Step7: Here, we’ll put the following data (from supermarket_sales) in different fields:

Category

Payment

Breakdown

Customer type

Y-axis

Quantity (Sum of Quantity)

After that you have to click on format your visual. Go to the General click on turn on visual border and the shadow. In the Visual border make the rounded corner of 15 px. After that Go to Visuals and turn on the data labels.

Insights from the Waterfall chart

The waterfall chart is a good way to see how spending changes between regular users and members in different payment methods. This shows that regular users spend more with their e-wallets than member users, as shown by the positive increase. Membership users, on the other hand, spend less with Ewallets than regular users. The initial values for each way of payment are shown by the total costs. Both groups of users spend about the same amount of cash, but members use credit cards more, which shows a change in preference. This graph helps you see how each way of payment fits into the overall pattern of spending.

Conclusion

With waterfall charts, we can visualize the effect of sequential positive and negative values ​​at a starting point over time or across categories. In a waterfall chart, the x-axis typically represents categories or time intervals, while the y-axis represents numerical values. The chart begins with an initial value, followed by a rise and fall that reflects the change in the data. These changes are represented with individual bars that either add or subtract to the initial value, ultimately culminating in a final total. This helps to understand how each category or time period contributes to the overall change in value.

If you like the article and would like to support me, make sure to: