How to Create a Waterfall Chart with Multiple Measures in Tableau

Building a standard waterfall chart in Tableau is fairly straightforward, but what happens when you need to visualize how multiple different measures contribute to a total? You might want to show how various revenue streams and cost centers build up to your final profit. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to construct a powerful waterfall chart in Tableau that incorporates several distinct measures, taking your financial storytelling to the next level.

What Exactly is a Waterfall Chart?

Before jumping into the multi-measure setup, let's have a quick refresher. A waterfall chart is an excellent way to visualize the cumulative effect of sequentially introduced positive and negative values. Think of it as telling a story about a journey from a starting point to an ending point.

For example, you could show:

• Your starting monthly profit.
• Positive bars for new revenue from different product lines.
• Negative bars for expenses like marketing spend, cost of goods sold (COGS), and salaries.
• The final bar showing your ending monthly profit.

Each bar "floats," starting where the last one ended, giving a clear picture of how each component contributes to the whole. They are incredibly useful for financial analysis, inventory tracking, or any scenario where you need to break down the changes between two points in time.

The Challenge: Multiple Measures in Tableau

Tableau is fantastic, but it’s not natively designed to create a waterfall chart from different columns (measures) in your dataset. If you have separate columns for Sales, COGS, and Marketing Spend, you can't just drag them onto a chart and expect them to line up in a waterfall sequence. Tableau is built to aggregate a single measure against different categories (dimensions).

To get around this, we need to restructure our thinking and, sometimes, our data. The key is to transform our separate measures into a single column that can be categorized by a new dimension. This allows us to use Tableau's powerful table calculations to build the chart piece by piece.

Step-by-Step: Building Your Multi-Measure Waterfall Chart

Let's build a chart to show how a company gets from its starting revenue to its net profit, incorporating different sales and cost measures. Our goal is to visualize this journey: Sales → -COGS → Gross Profit → -Marketing Expenses → -Operating Expenses → Net Profit.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

The most reliable way to handle multiple measures is to pivot your data. This turns your multiple measure columns into two columns: one containing the measure names and another containing their values.

Let’s say your data looks like this in a spreadsheet:

In Tableau's Data Source pane, you can select the measure columns (hold Ctrl or Cmd to select multiple), right-click, and choose Pivot. Your data will transform into a "tall" format like this:

Now, rename "Pivot Field Names" to something intuitive like "Metric" and "Pivot Field Values" to "Amount". This structure is perfect for building our chart.

Step 2: Create the Necessary Calculated Fields

With our data correctly structured, we’ll create a few calculated fields to control the bar size, sign (positive or negative), and position.

Right-click on the Data pane and select Create Calculated Field for each of the following:

1. Bar Sign (for negative values)

We need to tell Tableau which metrics are costs. Sales add to our total, while COGS and expenses subtract from it. This simple calculation flips the sign for costs.

// Name: [Adjusted Amount]
IF [Metric] = "COGS"
    OR [Metric] = "Marketing Expense"
    OR [Metric] = "Operating Expense"
THEN -[Amount]
ELSE [Amount]
END

2. Running Total of Amount

This calculation will keep a running sum of the Adjusted Amount across our metrics, forming the core logic of the waterfall. We'll set this up later as a table calculation, but creating the field first keeps things organized.

// Name: [Running Sum]
// Calculation is just:
SUM([Adjusted Amount])

3. Gantt Bar Size

Waterfall charts are clever Gantt charts in disguise. Each bar's size is simply the inverse of its value. This calculation will control how long each Gantt bar is.

// Name: [Gantt Size]
 -[Adjusted Amount]

4. Gantt Bar Start

This is the trickiest one. We need to tell each bar where to begin. It should start at the running total of all previous bars. The PREVIOUS_VALUE function is perfect for this.

// Name: [Gantt Start]
PREVIOUS_VALUE(0) + LOOKUP([Running Sum], -1)

This code tells Tableau: "Start with zero. For each subsequent bar, find its starting point by taking the starting point of the previous bar (PREVIOUS_VALUE(0)) and adding the previous bar's running sum." We have to make a slight adjustment to this logic shortly, but creating the field now is the first step.

Step 3: Assemble the Chart

Now we have all the building blocks. Let's create the visual.

1. Set up Columns and Rows:

• Drag your dimension Metric to the Columns shelf. Arrange the metrics in the order you want the story to unfold (e.g., Sales, COGS, Marketing, etc.). You can do this by manually dragging the labels on the chart's axis.
• Drag Gantt Start to the Rows shelf.

1. Change the Mark Type:

• In the Marks card dropdown, change the mark type from Automatic to Gantt Bar.

1. Define the Bar Size and Color:

• Drag Gantt Size to the Size shelf on the Marks card. Suddenly, you'll see the faint outline of a waterfall!
• Create another simple calculated field to control color called Is Positive?: [Adjusted Amount] > 0. Drag this onto the Color shelf. Edit the colors to something intuitive like green for positive and red for negative.

1. Set up the Table Calculations:

• Our chart is likely broken at this point because we haven't told Tableau how to compute our Gantt Start running total. Right-click on the Gantt Start pill on the Rows shelf, and select Edit Table Calculation.
• For Gantt Start, make sure the nested Running Sum calculation is being computed using Table (across).

At this stage, you should have a functional waterfall chart based on the correct order of operations!

Step 4: Adding Grand Totals

A waterfall chart is incomplete without starting and ending totals. You have two options here:

Option 1 (Easier): Add Totals from the Analytics Pane

• Click on the Analytics pane and drag Totals onto the view. Add Row Grand Totals. This will automatically add a total bar at the start and end of your chart. Keep in mind, this Grand Total column will be the sum of all components and might not represent exactly what you want like "Net Profit," but for a component analysis, it often works well.

Option 2 (More Flexible): Add Totals to Your Data Source

• For more control, you can add "Total" rows into your source data and handle them with IF statements in your calculations. This method gives you complete authority over what the total bar is called and how its value is calculated, which is especially useful when intermediate totals (like Gross Profit) are needed.

Customization and Best Practices

• Clarity with Labels: Drag SUM(Adjusted Amount) to the Label shelf on the Marks card. Format the numbers as currency or percentages to make them easy to read. This shows the value of the change each bar represents.
• Refine Your Tooltips: Go to the Marks card and click on Tooltip. Customize the text to tell a clearer story when a user hovers over a bar. You can include the metric name, the exact amount of change, and the running total up to that point.
• Sort Your Measures: The order of your Metric dimension on the Columns shelf is critical. Your chart tells a story, so ensure it flows logically (e.g., revenue, then costs of sales, then operational costs). Manually reorder them by dragging the headers if needed.
• Use Descriptive Titles: Don't leave your chart with "Sheet 1." A title like "Q3 Profit and Loss Breakdown" immediately sets the context for your audience.

Final Thoughts

Creating a waterfall chart with multiple measures in Tableau requires a few extra steps - preparing the data and setting up table calculations are the core hurdles. But once you master this technique, you unlock an incredibly intuitive way to visualize complex financial reports and performance narratives, turning rows of numbers into a clear, compelling story.

For a reporting workflow to be sustainable, it has to be simple. We see a lot of people spend their Mondays downloading CSVs and building workarounds in tools like Excel or Tableau, only to repeat the process every week. One of our main goals with Graphed is to eliminate that manual repetition. By connecting your financial and marketing data sources directly, you can automatically create real-time reports and dashboards just by describing what you need. Instead of building complex calculations, you can just ask, "Show me a waterfall chart breaking down our monthly profit, starting with total revenue and subtracting COGS and Marketing spend," and get an interactive chart in seconds.