The Ultimate Guide to Creating Waterfall Charts in Qlikview

Waterfall charts, also known as bridge charts or cascade charts, are a powerful data visualization for showing how a starting value increases or decreases through a series of changes. While they are most commonly used in financial analysis to visualize how a beginning balance changes due to cash inflows and outflows, they have many other applications, from analyzing changes in revenue to showing how a project‘s actual costs differed from the initial budget.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into waterfall charts and how to create them in Qlik Sense. I‘ll provide step-by-step instructions, examples and templates for different industries, data and statistics to support key points, and expert tips and best practices. By the end of this guide, you‘ll be able to confidently build professional, impactful waterfall charts in Qlik Sense that provide unique insights to your audience.

History of Waterfall Charts

Waterfall charts were invented in 1977 by the McKinsey & Company consulting firm. As data visualization expert Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic explains in her book Storytelling with Data:

McKinsey consultants needed a way to visually show clients how an initial value was affected by a series of positive and negative changes. The waterfall chart was born as a way to visualize these step-by-step changes, with the columns "cascading" from left to right.

Since then, waterfall charts have become a staple chart type in business settings. In fact, a study of annual reports from Fortune 500 companies found that 25% included a waterfall chart (source: Storytelling with Data).

When to Use Waterfall Charts

Waterfall charts are ideal for showing how an initial value is increased or decreased by a series of changes over a set period of time. Some common use cases include:

Visualizing revenue or profit between two time periods and the factors driving the change
Analyzing budget vs. actual cost variances by category
Showing how an initial investment amount changes due to income, expenses, and capital gains/losses
Breaking down the step-by-step buildup of a product‘s costs
Illustrating how a starting headcount number changes due to new hires, resignations, and layoffs

For example, here is a waterfall chart template showing how a SaaS company‘s revenue changed from 2021 to 2022:

From this, we can clearly see that while the company increased new bookings and decreased churn, a significant amount of downsell led to 2022 revenue being only slightly higher than 2021.

Creating Waterfall Charts in Qlik Sense

Now let‘s walk through how to create a waterfall chart like this in Qlik Sense.

Prepare Your Data

Your data table will need the following fields:

Item names (e.g. 2021 Revenue, New Bookings, Churn)
Values for each item
Item type (Increase, Decrease, or Total)

Here‘s a sample data table for the SaaS revenue example:

Item	Value	Type
2021 Revenue	1000	Total
New Bookings	250	Increase
Churn	-100	Decrease
Downsell	-200	Decrease
2022 Revenue	950	Total

Create the Chart

Create a new sheet in your Qlik Sense app and add a bar chart.
Drag your item field to Dimensions and your value field to Measures.
Change the bar chart orientation to horizontal stacked.
Add a second measure for Subtotals. Use an if() statement to check if the item type is Total. If so, show the value. If not, use a rangesum() function partitioned by item type to calculate a running subtotal. Here‘s the expression:

if([Type]=‘Total‘,[Value],rangesum(above([Value]),0,match([Type],‘Total‘)))

To create the floating bar effect, go to Appearance > Measures > Bar Offset for the Value expression. Enable custom offset and enter:

if([Type]=‘Total‘,0,above(total [Value]))

This starts each bar at the ending point of the previous subtotal.

Customize the Formatting

Go to Colors and legend > By dimension and set Total items to a dark color and Increase/Decrease to contrasting colors.
In Appearance > Measures, enable data labels on the bars.
Adjust the y-axis scale, labels and title to fit your data.
Remove any excess grid lines, borders and legends.

And here‘s the final interactive waterfall chart in Qlik Sense:

Notice how the subtotals accumulate with each change item and reset at the totals, creating the cascading effect. Hovering over each bar shows its exact value.

Waterfall Chart Examples and Templates

Waterfall charts can be adapted for many business scenarios. Here are a few more examples and templates you can use.

Marketing Campaign ROI Waterfall

This waterfall chart shows whether a marketing campaign generated a positive ROI by starting with the initial investment and subtracting costs. The final bar shows the net profit or loss.

IT Project Budget vs. Actual Variance

Here, a waterfall chart visualizes how much an IT project‘s actual costs differed from the budget and where the biggest discrepancies were.

Customer Churn Waterfall

For a B2B SaaS company, this chart breaks down the factors behind a change in customer churn rate between two periods. It separates structural factors like product/market fit from one-time events like a price increase.

Best Practices for Waterfall Charts

To get the most value from your waterfall charts, follow these tips:

Use contrasting colors to distinguish between subtotals, increases and decreases. Start with your brand‘s color palette.
Include a clear, concise title describing what the waterfall chart depicts. Avoid acronyms or jargon.
Directly label the data values on the bars. Don‘t make your audience work to discern the numbers.
Order the floating bars from largest to smallest in absolute value, so that the biggest changes stand out.
Provide additional context for large or unexpected changes using labels, annotations or supporting data.
Include a subtitle with the date range the waterfall covers.

As Qlik developer Dalton Ruer advises:

Format your data labels to match the number format of your measure. If it is a dollar value, add a dollar sign in front. If it is a percentage, add a percent sign after. Small formatting changes can make a big difference!

Waterfall Charts vs. Other Chart Types

While waterfall charts are excellent for visualizing a series of changes over time, they are not the only option. Some common alternatives include:

Bar/column charts for comparing totals side-by-side
Line charts for showing trends and fluctuations over time
Stacked bar charts for seeing how each change contributes to the grand total
Pie charts for visualizing each change as a percentage

However, waterfall charts have some distinct advantages. Mikhail Samoylovich, a data visualization expert at Qlik, explains:

Waterfall charts are the best choice for walking your audience through an accumulation narrative. Whereas a pie chart can only show one total, a waterfall chart can show the starting point, ending point, and step-by-step changes in between.

Advanced Waterfall Charts

Once you‘ve mastered the basics of waterfall charts, try exploring these advanced customization options:

Adding forecasts to the end of the waterfall for scenario analysis
Using custom expressions for the subtotals measure to calculate things like percent change, difference from average, etc.
Applying custom CSS to change the bar colors, fonts and spacing
Making your waterfall chart responsive so it renders well on different screen sizes
Following accessibility best practices like providing alternative text and testing for contrast

As inspiration, check out this interactive waterfall chart from McKinsey showing the potential economic impact of AI:

Economic Impact of AI – McKinsey

The Future of Waterfall Charts

While waterfall charts are a time-tested data visualization, there are many opportunities to apply them in new and innovative ways. Some possibilities include:

Animating the bars to show the changes over time
Combining waterfall charts with predictive analytics to forecast future changes
Showing cascading waterfalls to visualize changes at multiple levels (e.g. company, business unit, product)
Creating interactive waterfall charts that allow viewers to change the assumptions behind the analysis
Adapting waterfall charts for augmented/virtual reality data stories

As data storytelling expert Brent Dykes suggests:

Waterfall charts are ripe for innovation. I‘d love to see more companies embrace this visual and find creative ways to provide actionable insights to their audience.

Wrapping Up

Waterfall charts are a powerful way to visualize how a starting value changes due to a series of positive and negative subtotals. And now that you know how to create them in Qlik Sense, you‘re ready to start using this visual to discover insights and drive decisions.

To learn more, check out these helpful resources:

Remember, the goal of any data visualization is to tell a story. Waterfall charts are simply one tool to help you tell that story in a clear, compelling way. Focus on the narrative you want to communicate, and let waterfall charts bring that narrative to life.

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Waterfall Charts in Qlikview

History of Waterfall Charts

When to Use Waterfall Charts