Submitted by Square_Tea4916 t3_10sm33w in dataisbeautiful
DAAAN-BG t1_j72hxof wrote
Reply to comment by halfanothersdozen in [OC] McDonald’s High-Level Cash Flow Statement Visualized with a Waterfall Chart. by Square_Tea4916
This is a pretty well established graph form that shows inflows and outflows of something or favourable and adverse variances. It has similarities with a Sankey, with some advantages and disadvantages.
It will generally have two coloured bars + totals, one coloured as "good" and the other coloured "bad". So this shows lots of cash from operations of which a large quantity was paid out to investors. This isn't the most interesting example of a waterfall graph. You can use them to tell really nuanced stories of financial performance if done well. I've used them to explain an organisations credit risk position and how it has evolved throughout the year.
What a waterfall does a lot better than a Sankey is that it has a concept of inflows vs outflows, which are much better for considering profitability and any form of change to a stock of items. Sankey just has flows from A to B To C. There are certain categories of information that are hard to show in a Sankey like non-cash flows and accounting losses (imagine trying to fit market movements and trading activities into the personal finance Sankey that everyone thinks is interesting). It makes up for it by being able to show much more granular information in an intuitive manner.
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