This article addresses the needs of an advanced Waterfall Chart, which must chart both positive and negative financial KPIs. The flexibility of Excel and the added complexity required, in order to chart negative numbers in a Waterfall Chart, means there are a variety of ways to chart both positive and negative values.

This follow-up article to “How to create a Waterfall Chart in Excel”, adds a dynamic drop-down list to enable users to change the source time series period of the Waterfall Chart. A dynamic Waterfall Chart delivers flexibility, which a static Waterfall Chart is unable to offer the users of a financial model.

An Excel Graph is a great way to communicate a company’s financial performance to stakeholders. A conventional Excel graph has a hard time updating for source data changes; unlike other Excel functions such as formulas or cell formats that update seamlessly. The introduction of dynamic data ranges in an Excel Graph will solve this problem.

This article shows how to create a simple Waterfall Chart in Excel. It will apply the bar or column chart template with “Stacked Column” properties, which will produce an aesthetically pleasing graph of financial performance; based on a specified key performance indicator (KPI) over a selected time period i.e. EBITDA.

The humble financial dashboard represents a bite-size output to summarise the company’s financial performance, key drivers and deliver a high-level graphical or pictorial summary of a company. The very essence of a dashboard is to deliver a high-level snapshot of a company’s financial performance and position. The dashboard must be cosmetically uniform in font, colours and form. Whilst the dashboards must be short, sharp, concise and relevant, in what they are presenting to the time-consuming corporate executive or stakeholder.