Waterfall series

A waterfall chart is a form of data visualization that helps in determining the cumulative effect of sequentially introduced positive or negative values. The waterfall chart is also known as a flying bricks chart or Mario chart due to the apparent suspension of columns (bricks) in mid-air. Often in finance, it will be referred to as a bridge. (Quote from Wikipedia).

waterfall.png

Defining the points

Defining the points in a waterfall is pretty straight forward. Each point is accumulated on top of the next, or subtracted from the sum if it is negative. The most intuitive way of defining a series is to give each point a name and an Y value, and set xAxis.type to "category". A live demo can be seen at www.highcharts.com/demo/waterfall.

Furthermore, a waterfall series has two kinds of automatically computed columns. These points don't have an Y value, only a flag that specifies their type:

  • isIntermediateSum 
    When this property is true, the points acts as a summary column for the values added or subtracted since the last intermediate sum.
  • isSum
    When this property is true, the point display the total sum across the entire series.

Sample code:

data: [{
    name: 'Start',
    y: 120000
}, {
    name: 'Product Revenue',
    y: 569000
}, {
    name: 'Service Revenue',
    y: 231000
}, {
    name: 'Positive Balance',
    isIntermediateSum: true,
    color: '#0066FF'
}, {
    name: 'Fixed Costs',
    y: -342000
}, {
    name: 'Variable Costs',
    y: -233000
}, {
    name: 'Balance',
    isSum: true,
    color: '#0066FF'
}]

Colors

The up and down points can be colored separately through the color and upColor properties. Sums and intermediate sums have no specific colors, but these columns - as any column - can be colored by individual color settings.

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