Monday, November 29, 2010

Possible Waterfall charts in Xcelsius

Posted on 1 October 2010 10:44 am.Femke

In Xcelsius a waterfall charts is not default available, however with a little imagination you can create one from a stacked bar chart. Below I have published 4 examples.

Waterfall Example 1A

Excel source

Use the columns for the series (= coloring) and the rows for the labels (= columns in chart) by setting the data range to “Data in Columns”. On the appearance tab set the Marker Gap to 0 and the Marker Overlay to 100. Apply the series coloring accordingly.
Note: remember how Xcelsius builts up the chart; from bottom up to top. If you want your bottom bar color to be white, you have to start your series with the white color data.

Waterfall Example 1B

Excel source

Same example as 1A only the less colors, thus less series used.

Waterfall Example 2A

Excel source

You want to show how your profit and loss accounts are related by showing each individual account and use the colors red and green for the contribution amount (cost = red, revenue = green).
Again use the columns for the series (= coloring) and the rows for the labels (= columns in chart) by setting the data range to “Data in Columns”. On the appearance tab set the Marker Gap to 0 and the Marker Overlay to 100. Apply the series coloring accordingly.
Note: Again the order of the data columns determines the coloring in the chart. The white amount is calculated on the basis of the total of the previous column only in case of a cost account, that cost amount is subtracted from the total.

Waterfall Example 2B

Excel source

This is based on the same principle as the previous chart only it gets more interesting as the total amount gets below zero, thus we have to deal with negative totals with a positive contribution. This can be achieved by creating extra series as the order of the negative positioned bar colors is different than when using positive bars.
Note: The coloring change in the y-axe can be changed by formating in Excel, see this post.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


View the original article here

No comments:

Post a Comment