How to Make a Waterfall Chart in Excel (Free Template)

To make a waterfall chart in Excel, put labels in one column and amounts in the next, with gains positive and losses negative. Select both columns, then go to Insert, Insert Waterfall chart, Waterfall. Right-click the starting and ending columns and choose Set as Total so they sit on the axis. Excel 2016 and later have the chart built in.

Free download: ORM waterfall chart template (.xlsx). No form, no email. It holds an ARR bridge ready for the built-in chart, the same bridge as a stacked column chart for Excel 2013 and older, and a 12-month ARR waterfall. It opens in Google Sheets too.

Most guides chart a bank balance. This one uses the chart I would put in front of every SaaS CFO: the ARR bridge, from beginning ARR to ending ARR, with every movement named. The steps work the same for a profit bridge, a budget variance or a cash walk.

What is a waterfall chart?

A waterfall chart shows how a starting value becomes an ending value through a series of increases and decreases. The first and last columns stand on the horizontal axis. Each change in between floats, starting where the previous one ended, so you can see what added and what took away.

Microsoft also calls it a bridge chart. Finance teams use it for profit bridges, budget versus actual and cash flow. Revenue teams use it for ARR and MRR movement. The point of the chart is the middle: two quarters can end at the same number for very different reasons, and only the bars in between show which.

Which method fits your version?

If you have Excel 2016 or later, use the built-in chart. If you have Excel 2013 or older, use a stacked column chart. Google Sheets has its own waterfall type. The Excel version list comes from Microsoft's waterfall chart support page, which names Excel 2016 as the earliest version with the chart. The Google Sheets data rules come from Google's waterfall charts help page.

How to make a waterfall chart in Excel (2016 and later)

Four steps: lay out two columns, insert the chart, set the totals, then format. It takes about two minutes once the data is right.

Step 1: Lay out the data in two columns

Put the labels in column A and the amounts in column B, in the order you want the bars. Start with the opening value, then each change, then the closing value. Enter losses as negative numbers. Make the closing value a formula, so it always equals the opening value plus every change.

This is the ARR bridge from the template. The numbers are illustrative.

Step 2: Insert the waterfall chart

Select the labels and amounts, including the header row. On the Insert tab, click the Insert Waterfall chart icon (the one with floating columns) and choose Waterfall. If you cannot find the icon, go to Insert, Recommended Charts, then the All Charts tab, and pick Waterfall there. On a Mac, the Waterfall icon sits on the Insert tab.

Excel colors the columns by type and groups them in the legend as Increase, Decrease and Total.

Step 3: Set the first and last columns as totals

This is the step most people miss. Out of the box, Excel treats every row as a change, including your ending value, so the last bar floats on top of the running total at almost twice its real height.

Click the Beginning ARR column once to select the series, then click it again so only that column is selected. Right-click and choose Set as Total. You can also right-click, open Format Data Point and tick Set as total in the pane. Repeat for Ending ARR and for any subtotal you added. Both columns now stand on the axis. To make a column float again, clear the same box.

Step 4: Format it so the story reads in two seconds

Click the Increase entry in the legend to select every increase column at once, then set its fill on the Format tab. Do the same for Decrease and Total. To hide the thin lines between columns, right-click a column, open Format Data Series and clear Show connector lines. If the Chart Design and Format tabs are missing, click anywhere in the chart and they appear.

Give the chart a title that states the finding, not the topic. "ARR grew 23.5%; new logos did the work" tells a board more than "ARR bridge FY2026".

Worked example: an ARR bridge waterfall (illustrative)

The ARR bridge is the waterfall chart that earns its place in a board deck, because it explains why recurring revenue moved, not just that it moved. Here is the template's example with the running total each bar starts from. The same eight lines give you the two retention rates a CFO asks about:

• Gross revenue retention: ($4,000,000 minus $440,000 of losses) divided by $4,000,000 = 89.0%. In Excel: =(B5+B6+B7+B8)/B5.
• Net revenue retention: ($4,000,000 minus $440,000 plus $480,000 of expansion) divided by $4,000,000 = 101.0%. In Excel: =(B5+B6+B7+B8+B10+B11)/B5. New logos stay out.
• Net new ARR: $940,000, or 23.5% growth. Expansion is $480,000 of the $1,380,000 gained, about 35%.

To run the same math on your own bridge before you chart it, enter the lines in the ARR calculator.

Those illustrative rates sit near real medians: Benchmarkit's 2025 SaaS benchmarks put median NRR at 101% and median GRR at 88%, with expansion at a median 40% of new ARR. Read the chart and the story is plain. New logos carried the year, the base barely grew on its own, and customer churn was the biggest leak.

The lines are the ones we use at ORM. We call the chart Gross and Net Retention: beginning ARR, three loss lines, three gain lines, ending ARR, run by month, with GRR and NRR on the same chart. Beginning ARR always equals the prior month's ending ARR. That one rule is what makes the chart reconcile, and a reconciling waterfall by month is the most useful chart I know for a SaaS business. The rules for sorting each contract change into the right line, and the edge cases that break the tie-out, are in how to build an ARR waterfall.

How to make a waterfall chart in Excel 2013, 2010 or 2007

Build a 2-D stacked column chart with four series (an invisible base, decreases, increases and totals) and hide the base. This is how analysts made waterfalls before Excel 2016, and it still works in every version, in LibreOffice and in files you send to people on older Office.

Add helper columns next to your data. With the type of each row in column C ("Total" for the first and last rows) and a running total in column D, row 6 looks like this. Copy it down.

Then chart it:

1. Select the labels and columns E to H, including headers.
2. Insert, Column, 2-D Stacked Column.
3. Click the Base series, then Format Data Series, Fill, No fill, and Border, No line.
4. In the same pane, set Gap Width to about 50% so the bars read as steps.
5. Color Decrease red, Increase green and Total a neutral color, then delete Base from the legend.

The base is the lower of the previous and current running total, which is why one formula handles both up and down steps. It assumes the running total stays above zero, which is always true for ARR. A profit bridge that crosses into a loss needs extra series for the part below the axis, and that is the point where the built-in chart is worth the upgrade. The template's second tab has this chart built and linked to the bridge.

How to make a waterfall chart in Google Sheets

Select the start value and every change, insert a chart, and switch the type to Waterfall. Sheets builds the closing total for you.

1. Lay out labels in the first column and amounts in the second, one row per bar, with losses negative. That is the format Google's help page asks for.
2. Select from the starting value through the last change. Leave the ending total row out.
3. Insert, Chart. In the chart editor, under Setup, set Chart type to Waterfall.
4. Under Customize, then Series, tick Use first value as subtotal so the opening bar starts at zero. Add other subtotals in the same section.
5. Under Chart style, turn connector lines on or off.

The Google Sheets trap: if you include the ending total row, Sheets reads it as one more increase and stacks it on top, then adds its own final subtotal. You get a closing bar at about twice the real value. Leave the row out and name the closing value in the chart title if you need the label.

To use the template in Sheets, upload the .xlsx to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. The formulas carry over. Build the waterfall chart in Sheets from the ARR bridge tab using the steps above.

What is in the free waterfall chart template?

Four tabs, with yellow cells for your numbers and formulas everywhere else. Download the waterfall chart template (.xlsx). The monthly example puts more new business in the third month of each quarter, because that is the pattern we see across ORM customers: within a quarter the third month is always the largest and the first is the smallest. Replace it with your own numbers and the pattern will show up if your business has it.

Common waterfall chart mistakes

Almost every broken waterfall comes from one of these six. The plug line deserves a warning of its own. A balancing entry hides one error this month and twelve by year end, and every retention rate built on the series inherits them. If the check cell in the template does not read 0, stop and find the cause.

How do you read a waterfall chart?

Left to right: the starting value, each change in order, the result. Up bars add, down bars subtract, and the length of a bar is the size of the change, so the biggest bars are the drivers.

Read the losses as a group and the gains as a group. In the example, $440,000 left and $1,380,000 arrived. Then read inside each group. A bridge where customer churn is the biggest loss calls for a different fix than one where seat reductions are, and a year carried by new logos is a different business from one carried by expansion. Two bridges can share the same ending value and point to different priorities. That is the reason to chart the movement instead of the totals.

When is a waterfall chart the wrong chart?

Use a waterfall for movement between two points. Use something else for trends over many periods or for parts of a whole. A waterfall answers "what changed between January and December?" It does not show twelve months of trend; a line or column chart does that. For where pipeline sits by stage over time, a stacked column works better. Our guide to sales dashboard chart types matches each question to its chart, and the pipeline waterfall applies the same chart to pipeline added, won, lost and slipped in a quarter.

Where the spreadsheet stops working

A waterfall in Excel is the right place to start. The chart is easy. The data is hard. The work is getting the right amount field for each deal, sorting each contract change into the right line, and making the totals match what finance reports. In implementations, one of our checks is that a year of bookings in ORM adds up to what the company reports internally. Teams that skip that check end up with a chart that looks right and numbers that do not tie.

Consistency matters as much as the math. If the ending ARR on one slide is not the beginning ARR on the next, the board stops trusting the deck and starts checking every line. When the monthly waterfall becomes one of many spreadsheets a Sales Ops team rebuilds every month, it is time to automate it. ORM builds the gross and net retention waterfall by month from your CRM and billing data, next to the forecast. Until then, the template above is a solid way to run it by hand. For the full monthly method, start with how to build an ARR waterfall, and for the bridge terms themselves see the ARR bridge glossary entry.