How to Make a Tableau Waterfall Chart

Basic Waterfall Chart in Tableau

Waterfall charts are the most widely used visualization chart across businesses as they help in displaying the cumulative effect of sequential positive and negative values.

Also, the major difference between Waterfall charts and other normal Bar/Gantt/Running total charts is that they illustrate how much each dimension member with a positive/negative value adds/detracts to a running total respectively. Learn Tableau for Data Science A to Z

Summary:

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a waterfall chart in Tableau. To demonstrate that I am going to use Sample-Superstore data.

Steps:

1. Connect to Sample-Superstore dataset: Open the Tableau Desktop and select the “Sample-Superstore” dataset

2. Go to Sheet1:

3. Drag the “Order Date” dimension to “Columns” shelf and “Profit” measure to “Rows” shelf

4. Right click on “YEAR(Order Date)” and select “Quarter” option

5. Again, right click on “Order Date” and select “Discrete” option

6. Now, the next step is to “Add a Running Sum of Total Table Calculation” to “Profit” measure. To do this, right-click on the Profit, select “Add Table Calculation”, and add the following table calculation:

7. In “Marks Card’ change the chart type from “Line” to “Gantt Bar”

8. Now, create a calculated field named “-Profit” as shown:

9. Drag the new calculated measure “- Profit” to the “Size” tab on the ‘Marks Card” and the waterfall charts are completed

10. This waterfall chart represents the how much Profit is increasing or decreasing with respect to one quarter to the next. For example, using the below chart, the user can draw an insight that in “2015-Q4” the profit was the highest as compared to all the other year’s quarter.

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