Waterfall Challenge

Hi majid154a ,

you can do this with the built-in Waterfall visual, no custom visual needed.

1) Make “Budget NPAT” the first bar (left)

Create a sort column and sort cat by it.

• You already have index (1..n).
• In Data view: select cat → Column tools → Sort by column → choose index.

Now the waterfall will follow index, so Budget NPAT (index=1) is first.

2) Make “Budget NPAT” gray (not green/red)

In the built-in Waterfall, the only way to force a neutral color is to mark that bar as a Total.

Steps

1. Add the built-in Waterfall visual
2. Put:
• Category = cat
• Y-axis = value (as number)
3. In the chart, right-click the “Budget NPAT” bar → choose Set as total

Now it will use the Total color (you can set that to gray).

Set the gray color

Format pane → Data colors

• Total = gray
• Increase = green
• Decrease = red

Result: “Budget NPAT” becomes a gray “starting” bar on the left.

Important note (so you’re not surprised)

Marking “Budget NPAT” as Total means it’s treated as an anchor in the running calculation. That’s exactly what you want for a starting budget bar.

If you later also want an ending bar (like “Net” / “Final”) as gray too, you can right-click that bar and Set as total as well.

If “Set as total” is disabled

This usually happens when:

• value is text (because of commas)
• or you’re using a measure that returns non-numeric / has weird context

Fix: ensure value is numeric.
If your data is coming in as text like 4,261,532, create a numeric column:

Value_Num =

VALUE(SUBSTITUTE('Table'[value], ",", ""))

Use Value_Num in the visual.

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