How to Create a Bridge Chart in Excel

A bridge chart tells a visual story of how an initial value is affected by a series of positive and negative changes. Sometimes called a waterfall chart, it’s perfect for breaking down financial statements, tracking a sales pipeline, or showing exactly where your monthly budget went. We’ll show you how to create a versatile bridge chart in Excel, whether you're using the latest version or an older one.

What Exactly Is a Bridge Chart?

Imagine you want to explain your company's profitability from one quarter to the next. You started with a net profit of $50,000, saw an increase from new product sales, a decrease from marketing costs, another drop from operational expenses, and finally a boost from a one-time service contract, ending at $75,000. You could show the starting and ending numbers in a simple bar chart, but that leaves out the story of what happened in between. A bridge chart excels at filling in those blanks. It visualizes the journey from the starting value to the ending value, showing each intermediate step as a "floating" bar that either increases (rises) or decreases (falls) the cumulative total. The first and last bars are typically grounded to the baseline, representing the initial and final totals.

Common uses for bridge charts include:

• Visualizing a Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement: Starting with revenue and showing how costs cumulatively reduce it to a final net profit.
• Analyzing Inventory Changes: Tracking how starting inventory is impacted by new stock, sales, and returns.
• Tracking Sales Quota Attainment: Starting with a target and showing progress from deals won and setbacks from deals lost.
• Budget vs. Actual Analysis: Showing how a starting budget is affected by various expenses and income streams.

Method 1: Using Excel’s Built-in Waterfall Chart

If you're using Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2019, or Excel 2016, you have access to a built-in Waterfall chart type. This is the fastest and easiest way to create a clean, professional bridge chart.

Step 1: Set Up Your Data Table

First, organize your data in a simple table. Create two columns: one for the Category and one for the Value. List your changes sequentially. Use positive numbers for increases (like revenue or sales) and negative numbers for decreases (like costs or expenses).

Make sure to include your starting and ending totals in this table. Here’s a simple P&L example:

Step 2: Insert the Waterfall Chart

With your data prepared, inserting the chart takes just a few clicks.

1. Highlight the entire data range you just created, including the headers.
2. Navigate to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon.
3. In the Charts group, click the Waterfall, Funnel, Stock, Surface, or Radar Chart dropdown (it looks like a set of falling blue bars).
4. Select Waterfall.

Excel will immediately generate a chart. You’ll notice that some bars might not look right - specifically, your starting and ending values might be floating like the intermediate steps. We'll fix that next.

Step 3: Define Your Start and End Totals

Excel needs to know which columns represent totals so it can "ground" them to the baseline of the chart. In our example, "Opening Profit" and "Closing Profit" are totals.

1. Click once on the "Opening Profit" bar in your chart to select it.
2. Right-click the bar and select Set as Total from the context menu. The bar will instantly drop to the zero-axis.
3. Repeat this process for the "Closing Profit" bar. Click it once, right-click, and choose Set as Total.

Your chart now correctly shows the start and end points and illustrates the cumulative changes in between.

Step 4: Format Your Bridge Chart

Now you can customize the chart to make it more readable.

• Change Colors: Double-click any data bar to open the Format Data Series pane. Here, you can change the fill colors for Increase, Decrease, and Total bars to match your preferences (e.g., green for increases, red for decreases, grey for totals).
• Add Data Labels: Click the plus sign (+) next to your chart and check the box for Data Labels to show the value of each increase and decrease directly on the bars.
• Adjust Connector Lines: Thin lines connect the end of one bar with the start of the next, making the flow even clearer. If they aren’t visible, check the Connector Lines box in the Format Data Series options.
• Refine Your Title and Axes: Click the chart title to give it a descriptive name like "Q3 Profit and Loss Breakdown." You can also click on the vertical axis to format the number display (e.g., add a dollar sign).

Method 2: Manually Creating a Bridge Chart (For Older Excel Versions)

If you're using Excel 2013 or earlier, you don't have a built-in Waterfall chart. But don't worry - you can still create one by combining a stacked column chart with a few "invisible" bars and helper columns. It's more involved but gives you complete control.

Step 1: Your Data Table with Helper Columns

Start with the same initial data (Category and Value), but this time we need to add four helper columns: Base, Rise, Fall, and End Total.

• Base: This column will contain the value where the bottom of each floating bar should start. This creates the "floating" illusion.
• Rise: This will hold positive values only.
• Fall: This will hold the positive equivalent of negative values only.
• End Total: This isolates the final total bar.

Step 2: Calculate the Helper Columns Using Formulas

Now, let's populate these columns with formulas. Assume your data starts in row 2, with headers in row 1.

1. Calculate Rise and Fall:
2. Set up the Start and End Totals:
3. Calculate Base:

When done, your table should look like a series of numbers with helper columns for plotting.

Step 3: Create a Stacked Column Chart

1. Highlight your category column (A) and the helper columns Base, Rise, Fall, End Total (C, D, E, F).
2. Go to Insert > Column or Bar Chart > Stacked Column.

You will get a colorful stacked column chart, which doesn’t look like a bridge chart… yet.

Step 4: Transform it into a Bridge Chart

1. Make the Base "Invisible": Right-click on the Base series bars and choose Format Data Series. In the format pane, select Fill > No fill.
2. Order the Series Correctly: Right-click the chart > Select Data. Ensure the series are ordered from top to bottom as: Rise, Fall, Base, End Total.
3. Format Remaining Series: Set the fill color for Rise to green, Fall to red, and End Total to grey or blue.
4. Clean Up: Remove legend, add a chart title, format axes, and optionally add data labels for clarity.

And there you have a professional bridge chart, even without the built-in feature.

Final Thoughts

Building a bridge chart in Excel turns a simple list of numbers into a clear, compelling story about change over time. The modern built-in waterfall tool is fast and convenient, while the manual stacking method provides a reliable solution for anyone on an older version. Both methods empower you to communicate financial and operational changes far more effectively than a standard table or bar chart ever could.

Creating these visualizations from scratch can still be time-consuming, especially when you’re pulling data from multiple sources like Google Analytics, your CRM, and ad platforms just to get it into a single spreadsheet. Instead of spending hours exporting CSVs and fighting with formulas, Graphed allows you to connect all your data sources in one place. We let you create dashboards and real-time reports instantly, simply by asking for what you want in plain English. No more pivot tables, no more complicated chart setup - just answers.