Waterfall Chart in Excel

[wcwitowski]

I want to make a chart that shows the progressive variance from a budget amount to and actual amount. If my budget is 1,000,000 and I have 4 categories of variance - revenue is down 200,000, DL is favorable by 50,000, Distribution is not favorable by 100,000 and admin is not favorable by 10,000. My actual amount is 740,000.
I want the chart to start at 1,000,000. The revenue column should only show an area from 1,000,000 down to 800,000. The DL column should only show an area from 800,000 up to 850,000. The Distribution column should only show an area from 850,000 to 750,000. The Admin column should only show from 750,000 to 740,000.

My problem is every column chart I make wants to start from 0 and go to the data point. I just want to show the contribution of each successive category. Any ideas?

 

[pgc01]

Hi

Jon Peltier explains here how to build a waterfall chart:

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/Waterfall.html

 

[wcwitowski]

Thanks for the help. Can you tell me how I can solve another problem. My beginning and ending data points are about 900,000. My data swing is from 3,000 to 150,000. Because the invisible section is 900,000 the chart only shows small columns for the data swings between 3,000 and 150,000.
How do I reduce the data points on my axis so only the values between 800,000 and 1,200,000 show, thereby making my data swing columns appear larger on the chart?

 

[pgc01]

Hi

Right-click on the Y axis and set the minimum and maximum values to fixed with the values 800,000 and 1,200,000.