Southbank Events
Revenue waterfall slide bridging $6.1M to $7.4M
A waterfall exists to answer one question: what moved between the opening number and the closing one. This slide bridges a year at Southbank Events, a fictional events company, with two gains and two losses between the $6.1M it started with and the $7.4M it finished on.
What is on the slide
- Headline
- Revenue Bridge, FY25 to FY26, with the framing line naming both totals and the four step values.
- Opening
- $6.1M, drawn as a full bar from the baseline.
- Gains
- New clients plus $1.4M, expansion plus $0.6M, both in the brand colour.
- Losses
- Churn minus $0.5M, pricing minus $0.2M, both in the accent colour.
- Closing
- $7.4M, drawn as a full bar so the year ends where it can be compared with the opening.
When this is the right slide
Use a waterfall when the audience already knows both totals and is asking what happened in between, with four to six steps that account for the whole movement.
What to swap it for
Metrics: 4 Chevron Flow. Swap to the chevron flow when the steps are qualitative stages rather than signed amounts that have to add up to the closing total.
What this slide shows
A headline reads Revenue Bridge, FY25 to FY26, and the framing line underneath states both ends of the bridge and every step between them: new clients add $1.4M and expansion $0.6M, churn takes $0.5M and pricing $0.2M, so 6.1 plus 1.4 plus 0.6 minus 0.5 minus 0.2 lands on 7.4. The chart runs the full width of the canvas with six columns in order: Opening, New clients, Expansion, Churn, Pricing, Closing. The first and last are full height bars from the baseline at $6.1M and $7.4M. The four middle bars float at the running total, rising for the two gains and falling for the two losses, so the eye can walk the staircase from left to right. A light horizontal grid sits behind the bars. The vertical axis is labelled in millions from $0 to $9M, so the opening and closing bars stand on the true baseline and their heights compare honestly. There are no value labels on the bars, which is why the step values sit in the framing line instead. Keep the step count low enough to narrate.
Who this slide is for and when to use it
Board meetings, investor updates and annual reviews, where both totals are already known and the question is composition. It is also the standard way to explain a number that moved less than expected: a year that grew only twenty one percent looks different once a five hundred thousand dollar churn bar is visible. The layout is a poor fit for forecasting, because a bridge implies the steps have happened. It is also a poor fit when a single step dwarfs the others, since a bar of $4M next to three of $0.2M leaves the small ones unreadable. In that case the honest slide is a hero number for the big driver plus a short table for the rest.
How to adapt it
First, name the steps as causes rather than as categories. New clients, expansion, churn and pricing are things the business did or had done to it, while categories like product mix leave the reader to guess. Second, keep the count between four and six. Two steps is a comparison, not a bridge, and eight steps makes each bar too thin to read at the back of a room. Third, use the same shape for other bridges: headcount, margin, cash and pipeline all decompose the same way, and the layout accepts any single series of signed amounts. When the steps stop being amounts that add up, for instance when they are stages of a process rather than movements in a number, the chevron flow layout carries the same left to right logic without pretending to arithmetic it does not have.
What makes this slide work
The four steps account for the whole movement
On the slide, opening $6.1M plus $1.4M and $0.6M, less $0.5M and $0.2M, is exactly $7.4M. There is no other column and no unexplained residual. A bridge with a bar called other is a bridge that has not been finished, and it is usually the bar the audience asks about first.
Sign is carried by colour and by position
Gains sit in the brand colour and step upward, losses sit in the muted accent and step down, so the direction is legible before any label is read. Because the theme's accent is a neutral blue grey rather than red, a loss reads as a movement rather than as an alarm, which suits a bridge where losses are expected.
Both totals are full bars
The opening and closing columns run from the baseline while the four middle columns float, which is the convention a finance audience expects. It means the two numbers that get quoted in the minutes are the two that are directly comparable on the page, and the steps between them are clearly a decomposition rather than six separate results.
Questions people ask
What is a revenue waterfall for?
It decomposes the movement between two totals into the causes that produced it. This slide turns growth from $6.1M to $7.4M into four named movements, so the discussion is about churn and pricing rather than about whether growth was good. Any metric that changes for more than one reason can be presented this way.
How many steps should a waterfall have?
Four to six between the two totals. This slide uses four. Fewer and the bridge tells you nothing you could not have said in a sentence; more and the bars become too narrow to label and the audience loses the running total. If you have ten drivers, group them into four and keep the detail for the appendix.
How do you show the closing total?
As a full bar from the baseline, like the opening one, so the two comparable numbers look comparable. The middle bars float at the running total. Getting this wrong, by letting the closing bar float as well, is the most common waterfall error, because it leaves the reader without a reference for either end of the bridge.
Should losses be red?
Not necessarily. This slide uses the theme's accent, a neutral blue grey, so a loss reads as a movement rather than as a failure. Red is worth reserving for numbers that are genuinely bad news, and it carries poorly for readers with colour vision deficiency unless the direction is also clear from position, which in a waterfall it is.
Can a waterfall show a forecast?
It is better used for what happened. A bridge implies the movements are settled, and a forecast bridge invites the audience to argue with each bar in turn rather than with the assumption behind the plan. Scenario lines on a growth chart handle forecasts better, because they show a range rather than a false decomposition.
What if one step is much larger than the rest?
The chart degrades. A bar four times the size of the others compresses everything else into a band a few pixels tall. When that happens, lead with the large driver as a hero number and use a short table for the remaining movements, or split the bridge into two slides at a natural boundary such as gains and losses.
Build your own in about a minute
The button below opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match your own, generate, then edit anything you like.
Make one like thisOther slide examples
Profit and loss slide with eight lines and a change column
A profit and loss slide has to survive someone adding it up in their head, which means the line items must reconcile and the rounding must be consistent. This one covers two financial years at Brightside Physio, a fictional clinic group, in eight rows and four columns.
Growth scenarios slide with base, upside and downside to 2029
Three forecast lines mean nothing without the assumption that produces each one, which is why the assumptions belong on the slide rather than in the presenter's head. This one runs to 2029 for Arbor Sensors, a fictional maker of water monitoring hardware, from a common starting point of $2.3M.
Global presence slide with nine countries highlighted on a map
A presence map answers one question, which is where a company operates, and it answers it faster than any list of country names. This one shades nine markets for Solace Translation, a fictional translation company, with three numbers beside the map for everything the shading cannot say.
Want the steps in the builder? Read Add charts, maps and diagrams to slides, then Edit your deck with the AI assistant. For everything this generator can do, see the slide maker.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .