Waterfall charts provide a valuable insight into your data, but creating them can be tricky. Join our BI expert Matej as he shows you how easy it can be with the Zebra BI Charts visual. Let’s get this party started.
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My name is Matej, and in this lesson, I’ll show you how to create a single-measure waterfall chart using Zebra BI Charts visual.
The waterfall chart is a very popular chart type because it gives a valuable insight into your data. Creating a waterfall chart is usually tricky yet a piece of cake when working with the Zebra BI Charts visual.
It’s a fantastic way to navigate through a report because you can jump to a page containing what interests you the most, just in a few clicks
Let‘s get going.
We’ll start with a blank Power BI page and add the Zebra BI Charts visual, increase the size, and then add the category, which in our case is Account, to the Category placeholder.
Let’s first sort the account according to the AccountID. Click on the Account field, go to Column tools, Sort by Columns, and select the AccountID field.
I will also need the values so I’ll add the Actuals measure to the Values placeholder.
As you already know, the Zebra BI Charts visual offers many chart types, so we’ll use the chart slider function to move from the bar chart, and through other chart types to finally get to the waterfall chart.
As you can see now, we only have green and red bars, but we want to end up with totals, subtotals and, of course, variances, so we’ll need to define what each account really is.
We’ll begin on the left, where I have Earning before interest and taxes (EBIT) 2021, and when you right-click on the category, you can then say this is actually a result. A result doesn’t have a positive effect, so it shouldn’t be green. By defining it as a result, the color automatically turns black, and from here, we’ll start building the waterfall or bridge chart to the next result.
The next account is sales revenue which is a positive KPI so it should be green, all good here. The same thing with Income, another positive KPI.
But Material is a cost-related KPI, so it should not be a green bar going up but instead a red bar going down. Right-click, Invert, and that’s all we have to do. The same with Personnel; it’s an expense, we’ll invert it.
Freight is another cost, let’s invert this one too. We spent 1.3k less for Transportation costs, so we need that to be in green.
Advertising, Other operational expenses and Depreciation also need to be inverted.
Financial result is OK, so we’ll leave it as it is, which brings us to the EBIT of the following year, which of course, is subtotal. Right-click and select Result.
We’re left with the foreign exchange KPI, which brings us to the final result. Once I mark this as a result, I have a chart showing the effect of KPIs going from EBIT 2021 to EBIT 2022 and also the adjusted final result.
As soon as the results are defined, the International business communication standard (IBCS) notation patterns can be applied. Right-click on the result-defined category, and select the correct notation. We’ll mark EBIT 2021 as the previous year, we’ll leave EBIT 2022 as an actual and let’s assume the final adjustment is just an estimate, so we can mark the last column as a Forecast.
To see the changes between subtotal and total values and get immediate business insights, the difference highlights are here to help. They will appear automatically, when more than one result is defined on the chart. If you go to the formatting pane and find the Difference highlight section, you’ll see many options to adjust the highlights to your needs. Show relative and absolute variance, and make them stand out, among others.
Now you know how to create a single-measure waterfall chart with scenario notations and difference highlights. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. So go ahead … hop on to the next one.
