How to create an Income Statement using Sankey Diagram

income statement sankey diagram excel

Learn how to visualize an Income Statement in Excel using a Sankey Diagram. A Sankey Diagram is a powerful tool for visually compellingly showcasing the flow of financial data, such as revenues, costs, and profits. It effectively highlights the proportion of different income and expense categories, making identifying key contributors and areas of concern easier.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a Sankey Diagram step by step, customize the layout, and format the chart to represent the relationships between income streams, expenses, and net profit.

Waffle Chart

create a waffle chart excel

Learn how to create a Waffle Chart in Excel to visualize progress towards a goal with clarity and style. Waffle Charts, sometimes called square pie charts, are grid-based visualizations that break down data into a 10×10 grid, where each square represents 1% of the total. They effectively illustrate percentages or highlight key metrics in dashboards and reports.

Unlike traditional pie charts or bar graphs, Waffle Charts offer a minimalist and visually appealing alternative that is easier to interpret at a glance. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to construct a Waffle Chart in Excel, using conditional formatting and simple formulas to create a dynamic, customizable visual. This chart template provides a modern, sleek way to keep your audience informed and focused.

Polar Plot

polar-plot-excel

Learn how to create a Polar Plot in Excel to compare variables on a circular axis for insightful visual analysis. Although not a native Excel chart type, Polar Plots are highly versatile and ideal for visualizing cyclical data or comparing multiple variables in a radial layout.

This chart uses a polar coordinate system, where values are plotted in a circular format, making it perfect for displaying patterns or relationships that might be less evident in traditional linear charts.

We will guide you through the step-by-step process of creating a Polar Plot in Excel by adapting existing chart types, setting up your data, and customizing the chart for a polished, professional look.

Small Multiples Chart

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Small multiples, or panel charts, are an excellent way to break down complex data into smaller, easier-to-understand segments. By presenting multiple similar charts side by side, this visualization method enables users to compare trends, patterns, or values across categories without overcrowding a single chart.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a small multiples chart in Excel, perfect for tracking weekly sales, performance metrics, or other grouped data. Instead of using cluttered lines or bars on a single graph, this approach organizes your data into separate panels for each category or individual, such as team members, departments, or products.

Progress Circle Chart

progress circle chart

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to construct a progress circle chart step by step, using Excel’s charting tools and formatting tricks. We’ll guide you through setting up the data, layering the doughnut charts, and customizing the design to match your dashboard style.

Whether you’re monitoring project milestones, sales targets, or individual performance, the Progress Circle Chart offers a compact and intuitive representation of progress. The circular design is not only aesthetically pleasing but also easy for viewers to interpret at a glance.

Waterfall Chart

how to create a waterfall chart in excel

Learn how to create a Waterfall Chart in Excel to track value changes over time or categories. Also known as a bridge chart, the Waterfall Chart is ideal for visualizing how a starting value is incrementally increased and decreased, ultimately leading to a final result.

This chart is perfect for financial analysis, project management, and scenario modeling, highlighting positive and negative contributions. In this tutorial, you’ll discover how to build and format a Waterfall Chart step by step, including customizing colors to distinguish increases, decreases, and totals. Take a closer look at the template!

Conditional Formatting for Column or Bar Charts

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Learn how to apply conditional formatting to column or bar charts in Excel for enhanced data visualization. Conditional formatting allows you to dynamically change the colors of your chart elements based on predefined rules, making highlighting key trends, comparisons, or performance thresholds easier. For instance, you can use green for positive values, yellow for neutral ranges, and red for negative values, providing immediate insights.

This tutorial uses multiple data series to achieve a visually dynamic chart. Whether you’re working with sales data, financial performance metrics, or KPIs, conditional formatting makes interpreting and presenting data effectively easier.

Sales Funnel Chart

sales-funnel-chart

Sales Funnel chart effectively tells the story of your sales process, from the initial identification of leads to closing deals, by illustrating the progressive narrowing of potential opportunities at each stage. By tracking percentages and absolute values through the pipeline, the Sales Funnel Chart is a must-have for understanding conversion rates and identifying bottlenecks.

Built using a combination of an area chart and scatter plot, this visualization provides a polished, streamlined look that enhances any sales report or dashboard. The gradient-style narrowing shape is perfect for showcasing key metrics such as lead validation, qualification, proposal stages, and final conversion rates.

Tornado Chart

tornado-chart-excel

Discover how to create a Tornado Chart in Excel for side-by-side data comparisons. Tornado Charts are widely used in sensitivity analysis, risk assessment, and decision-making processes to visualize the impact of varying factors.

By using a clustered bar chart with custom formatting and aligning the axes properly, you can highlight differences between positive and negative values effectively. This step-by-step tutorial will guide you through the process, helping you create visually appealing charts.

Gauge Chart

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Learn how to create a Gauge Chart in Excel using a combo chart: a doughnut shows the zones, and the pie section indicates the actual value.

The gauges (speedometers) logic is simple: it provides information about a single data point (value). Therefore, using red, yellow, and green colors (that follow RAG reporting – red, amber, green), it’s easy to compare the actual value to a goal (plan value). We have said quite many times why we love this graph.

A dual gauge provides more flexibility, and you can display multiple KPIs. It is helpful if you want to create a plan versus actual performance comparisons between two periods. Gauge charts are easy to read and grab the attention of the audience. Almost all BI solutions use this graph to support strategic decisions. The template uses a combination of a pie and a doughnut chart.

Highlight Data Points in an Excel Chart

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Make your charts more insightful by highlighting key data points in Excel. This tutorial shows you how to emphasize high and low points or any specific data values in your chart, making your visualizations more impactful and easier to interpret.

Highlighting critical data points allows your audience to focus on the most important parts of the chart without being distracted by unnecessary details.

This technique is versatile and can be used for line charts, bar charts, or scatter plots. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to create stunning charts that clearly communicate your insights, whether for presentations, dashboards, or reports. Perfect for highlighting trends, outliers, or specific milestones, this method is a valuable addition to your Excel skills.

Plan Actual Variance Chart

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a Plan-Actual Variance Chart in Excel, customize the color-coded variance markers, and ensure your chart is both professional and impactful. eate an attention-grabbing visualization, use the variance chart template. The graph clearly shows the differences between the plan and actual values month by month.

This chart template is designed to visually represent the monthly differences between planned and actual values, making it an essential tool for performance monitoring and financial analysis. By incorporating variance arrows—green for positive (above plan) and red for negative (below plan)—this chart instantly highlights areas that need attention.

Multi-Layer Doughnut Chart

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Create a Multi-Layer Doughnut Chart in Excel! This advanced chart type is ideal for displaying multiple data series in a compact, layered format. By stacking doughnut rings, you can compare related metrics side by side while maintaining a clean and organized design.

This chart allows you to represent hierarchical data or different categories, such as regional sales, department contributions. Each layer corresponds to a specific data series, making it easier to identify relationships and trends within your dataset.

In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through formatting techniques, customizing colors, and optimizing the layout for maximum readability.

Dumbbell Chart

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Highlight changes effectively with a Dumbbell chart. Also known as a dot plot, this chart type is perfect for visualizing the difference or change between two data points across multiple categories. By using two data series connected by lines, the Dumbbell chart clearly illustrates trends and comparisons.

We’ll guide you through setting up the data, using scatter plots, adding connectors with error bars, and customizing the design for a polished and professional appearance.

Quadrant Chart

quadrant-chart-excel

The Quadrant Chart allows you to identify clusters, trends, or outliers within your dataset by categorizing data into four sections, each representing a different combination of values. For example, it can help you visualize opportunities versus threats or compare performance under two key metrics.

This powerful chart template divides a scatter plot into four distinct quadrants, making it ideal for comparing data points across two variables. It’s useful for SWOT analysis, market segmentation, risk assessment, or prioritizing tasks based on specific criteria. We’ll guide you through setting up your data, defining axis boundaries, and formatting the chart for clarity.

Sales Forecast Chart

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In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a Sales forecast chart step by step. We’ll guide you through structuring your data, using Excel’s combination chart feature. Predict future trends with a customized chart template. This graph combines a column chart and two line charts.

Radial Bar Chart

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This tutorial will show you how to create a radial bar chart in Excel. It provides easy comparison options for multiple categories. Use the circular bar template to show the sales visually effectively.

Excel doesn’t natively support Radial bar charts. We will guide you step by step through creating one using creative workarounds. You can build a great-looking visualization by adapting Excel’s built-in features, such as doughnut charts and custom formatting.

Dynamic Charts

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Dynamic charts in Excel help us to improve the quality of data visualization by allowing users to update and interact with data.

Sometimes, we use a dynamic chart design to display the key metrics from a vast amount of data. To improve your graphs, apply Excel Form controls (drop-down list, spin, radio buttons).

Marimekko Chart

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Today’s guide will explain how to create a Marimekko Chart in Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Microsoft 365 to display market segmentation maps using easy-to-understand visualization.

The Marimekko chart is the most powerful tool for examining the overall market. It is also known as a market map and helps drive discussions about growth opportunities. You can segment an industry or company by customer, region, or product.

It makes it easy for your audience to understand each part or bar’s relationship to the total. The graph breaks down a market by combining multiple bars into a single map using a variable-width 100% stacked bar chart. Take a closer look at the template!

How to Create a Sankey Diagram in Excel

How-to-create-Sankey-Diagram-in-Excel

The Sankey diagram is a high-level data visualization tool, not just in Excel. We use it to show and follow the flow of resources. The main advantage of using it is that the flow chart lets you visually show and analyze complex processes quickly. The main graph uses a group of shapes. You can find a detailed description of how to build the template using custom calculations and 100% stacked area charts.

You can select blocks to highlight the chosen path and generate custom views, which is useful for decision-making support. Dynamic visualization allows you to build various scenarios without rebuilding the chart. Creating the Sankey diagram without the d3js library is almost impossible, but here is an Excel example.

Bubble Timeline Chart

bubble-timeline-chart-excel

A bubble timeline chart is a creative variation of a scatter plot, where each data point is represented as a bubble of varying size, adding depth to your timeline visualization. It’s perfect for highlighting project milestones over time, or showcasing key historical events with an additional layer of quantitative data.

By combining the timeline layout with dynamic bubble sizes, this chart provides an engaging and clear way to illustrate relationships between time and other variables. Larger bubbles can signify higher values or greater significance, helping viewers quickly grasp the importance of each event.

Stream Graph

stream graph excel chart template

The Stream Graph in Excel is ideal for displaying high-volume datasets and discovering trends and patterns across various categories over time. You can create various graphs in Excel, like a stream graph. The graph visualizes sales, revenue, or performance across multiple products or categories. Its overlapping design helps to maintain a clean and clear visual hierarchy, making it easier to compare contributions and track changes over time.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a stream graph template using stacked area charts and custom formatting techniques. We use multiple stacked area charts and custom formatting for overlapping. If you are working with numeric data types, a streamgraph is a smart choice to show the evolution of a variable on a flowing shape.

Cycle Plot Template

cycle plot panel chart small multiples in Excel

A Cycle Plot, also known as a panel chart, is an innovative visualization that displays multiple small charts, each using the same scale, side by side. It is perfect for highlighting seasonal patterns, trends over time, or category-wise comparisons, making it a go-to solution for tracking data across consistent intervals.

This chart is especially useful when working with custom reports where space is limited, but clarity is essential. By segmenting the data into separate panels, Cycle Plots allow you to focus on trends within individual categories while maintaining an overview of the broader data set. For example, they are widely used to track sales performance across regions, seasonal revenue trends, or KPIs variations over time. Download the template!

Advanced Score Meter Chart

The score meter chart template is ideal for dashboards and performance reports, helping audiences quickly assess quality, efficiency, or other metrics. Whether tracking customer satisfaction, evaluating test scores, or monitoring project milestones, this chart presents complex data in a simple and actionable format.

This tutorial will guide you through creating the score meter chart step by step, including setting thresholds, applying color scales, and formatting the chart for a polished and professional result. Use it to make your data-driven insights stand out while keeping them accessible and impactful.

Bullet Chart in Excel

bullet chart graph excel

No one likes to work with useless reports. The Bullet chart is one of the best usable chart types in Excel and a real alternative to gauges. It transforms data using length and height, position, and color to show actual vs. target using bands.

You can save more space using bullet graphs. Without using and advanced chart design, you can easily tell a story using segmented bar charts. In our detailed guide, you can learn how to track progress easily. Download the chart template!

Scrolling Period Chart

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The scrolling period chart template helps you if you want to track a longer period and within it a highlighted period.

Variance Analysis Chart

variance analysis report

We are using variance charts in everyday work in Excel. Comparing the planned value with the actual value is your goal if you are in sales.