Waterfall Chart
Understanding how individual components contribute to a total value—whether it’s revenue, cost, or any KPI—can be challenging with standard charts. The Waterfall Chart clearly breaks down how starting values increase or decrease across a series of steps, helping you visualize cumulative impacts over time or across categories. Each bar represents a change, whether positive or negative, building a clear picture of how you got from point A to point B—so you can quickly identify which factors are helping or hurting your bottom line.
Release Notes for the Waterfall Chart can be found here.
Installation and configuration
The Waterfall Chart plugin can be installed by an Admin, following the directions in Installing QBeeQ Plugins.
Operating system and version support:
- Linux - Latest
- Windows - Latest
Creating a new Waterfall Chart
To create a new Waterfall Chart widget:
- Choose QBeeQ Waterfall Chart from the widget dropdown list
- Select data as Categories, Values, and Sub Categories
- Configure settings
Select data
Use the data panel to select data to display on the chart:
- Categories - The dimension used to define the X-axis. Common examples include product categories or cost components (e.g., COGS) in financial analysis.
- Values - A formula or calculated field that determines the height of each bar. Supports both positive and negative values to represent gains and losses.
- Break By (optional) - A secondary dimension that breaks each bar into sub-categories, allowing for more detailed insights within each category.
Configure settings
Setting | Description | Options |
Bar Type | Determines whether columns are displayed individually or stacked by the Break By dimension | Classic, Stacked |
Animation | Enables smooth transitions and entrance effects for the widget | On, Off |
Themes | Defines the background color of the widget | Light, Dark |
Color By | Controls how columns are colored | Category, Value |
Show X-grid lines | Toggles the display of vertical grid lines along the X-axis | On, Off |
Show Y-grid lines | Toggles the display of vertical grid lines along the Y-axis | On, Off |
Enable Scroll Zoom | Enables zooming via scroll and adds additional axis controls | On, Off |
Data Point Label | Shows or hides value labels on each column | On, Off |
Show Grand Total | Displays a final column showing the grand total across all categories | On, Off |
Using the Waterfall Chart
Tooltips
Viewers can hover over each point to view a tooltip containing data defined in the Data Panel:
- Column
Zoom in/out
Viewers can zoom in and out of the Waterfall chart to focus on specific columns. This can be done using the mouse scroll or by enabling zoom controls through the Enable Zoom Scroll setting.
Click to filter
Viewers can filter the Waterfall Chart by:
- Clicking on any column
- Dragging to select a group of columns
Once a selection is made, a Clear Selection button will appear in the top-right corner of the widget title bar, allowing the filter to be removed.