Creating Waterfall Charts in Tableau

Today, we will talk about how to create waterfall charts in Tableau.  A waterfall charts is a good tool for seeing how sequential processes contribute to the whole.  It is very similar to a stacked bar, albeit with a different twist.  Here is a sample we pulled from Google.

Sample Waterfall Chart

For this, we created a sample checking account statement in Excel.  Here is a snippet of it.  In case you were wondering, this is fictitious and in no way reflects the statement of ourselves or anyone that we know of.

Row ID	Date	Description	Amount	Daily Posted Balance
2	4/2/2013	Direct Deposit	$485.00	$1,596.56
3	4/2/2013	Rent	($804.74)	$791.82
4	4/4/2013	Food	($16.00)	$775.82
5	4/4/2013	Car	($374.43)	$401.39
6	4/5/2013	Cable	($34.23)	$367.16
7	4/8/2013	Direct Deposit	$1,598.75	$1,965.91
8	4/8/2013	Gas	($39.56)	$1,926.35

Step 1:

• Create a Negative Amount calculation
• Create the following calculation

Negative Amount

Step 2:

• Drag MONTH( [Date] ), DAY( [Date] ) and [Row ID] to the Columns Shelf
• Drag [Daily Posted Balance] to the Rows Shelf
• Drag [Amount] to the Colors Shelf, play with it if you choose
• Drag [-Amount] to the Size Shelf
• Drag [Description] and [Date] to the Details/Tooltip Shelf

Waterfall Chart

Now, we can see a simple representation of our account balance throughout the month.  However, what if your data set doesn't contain a nice [Daily Posted Balance] field.  Have no fear, you can recreate it using table calculations.  Obviously, we would lose the ability to see the start balance, but that's a topic for another post.

Step 1.5:

• Create a Running Sum of Amount
• Create the following calculation

Balance

Step 2:

• Create the same chart as before, using [Balance] instead of [Daily Posted Balance]
• Also, you will need to place [Description] and [Date] on the Tooltip Shelf this time

Waterfall Chart (with Running Sum)

Look familiar?  It should because it is the same exact chart we just saw, except that we now start at 0 instead of ~1100.  Depending on how your data looks you may have to slightly alter the way you approach this.  There are a ton more cases where you can use Waterfall Charts.  We hope you found this informative.  Thanks for reading.

Brad Llewellyn

Associate Consultant

Mariner, LLC

llewellyn.wb@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradllewellyn