graph variance components when 1 is negative

[nellis]

I'm trying to graph the components of a year-over-year variance (example,
fuel, new store growth, realigment of stores, etc.), along with the total
variance, but one of the components is negative. If I just take the
individual variances and graph in a bar chart, the size of the bar chart is
greater than the total because it's not factoring in the negative component.
How can I do this?

 

[Wigi]

Hello

Did you mean something like this?

http://www.andypope.info/charts/Invertneg.htm

 

[Jon Peltier]

Instead of a stacked bar chart, try a waterfall chart:

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/Waterfall.html

- Jon

 

[nellis]

Thanks for the response, Jon. I did think of a waterfall chart, however I
have 7 ship points that I want to show variances for and was hoping to do
this in one chart - each bar would be a ship point and broken down by
variance components.

 

[Jon Peltier]

A stacked chart isn't exactly what you want. You could set it up so there
are two stacks per item, one positive and one negative. This would work
fine, but it would take some rearranging of the data.

- Jon