The following best practices for creating and formatting Waterfall charts in Power BI will guarantee true representation:
Use the Right Data Structure: Verify that there are records for both increases and decreases and that their contributing factors are identifiable with a category field (for example, sources of income or cost components). If totals do not match, check whether your dataset is summing correctly.
Use the Right Breakdown Field: The Category field should represent logical stages like periods, departments, or financial components. If there are problems with how the changes show up, consider checking for missing values or sorting the breakdown field differently.
Be sure to Summarize the Data: Power BI implicitly sums all numeric fields, and this could easily lead to incorrect totals. Check the measure you've used to format the data; in addition, if row-by-row calculations are required instead of automatic aggregation, consider using SUMX() in DAX.
Look Out for the Wrong Total: If the final total is still not what you expected, re-examine what kind of calculation you may have to do to set it. Occasionally, the inaccuracies are solved by creating a calculated column or by adjusting your base measure.
Clarifying Everything: Label everything, color-code specifics for increments or decrements, show the tooltips, and set the gap widths to clarify the insights derived from it. Logical sort ordering can also help here.
