Create financial charts to tell your business story

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It's important to visualize your financial data in the form of charts simply because humans respond to and process visual data better than anything else. Here's when using financial charts is especially important: 

1. Performance analysis. Financial charts will help you digest financial insights better and take action depending on the situation. Seeing your data split into actionable categories will make it easier to analyze your business situation. 

2. Illustrate how annual profit is affected by revenue and costs.

3. Set better goals. By displaying your business data in interactive financial charts, you'll be able to set valuable financial KPIs for your business leading to growth and success.

3. Inventory audits. Show positive and negative changes in quantities.

4. Avoid mistakes and save time. Displaying your financial data in a visual, interactive chart will help you avoid errors and manual pen-and-paper data analysis. 

5. Explain how the final net value is calculated. 

6. Show product value over a period of time.

Infogram's chart creator allows you to easily create professional financial charts in just 5 steps:

1. Log in to Infogram

2. Select a financial chart type – candlestick or waterfall

3. Upload or copy and paste your data

4. Customize the labels and adjust the design by changing the background, colors, and fonts

5. Download your financial chart, add it to your report, infographic, embed it on your website, or share it on social media

Infogram is super easy to use and made with non-designers in mind. Even if you don't have any programming, coding, or design experience, you'll be able to make financial charts in just a couple of steps. 

We did all the technical work for you. Now, all that's left to do is start creating.

Here are some general tips to keep in mind to create financial charts like a superstar:

1. Use multiple colors. Go for green-red or white-black colors to represent positive and negative values. 

2. Label values for easy readability.

3. Keep the gridlines thin and light. That way, the lines won't compete with the data visually. 

4. Leave sufficient space between the bars.

5. Order the increases and decreases by size. For waterfall charts, if there's no intrinsic order in the categories, arrange the increases and decreases by size (smallest to largest or largest to smallest).

Candlestick charts and bar charts indeed are similar as they show the same information but in different ways. Because of the color coding and thicker bodies, candlestick charts are more visual which makes them better at highlighting the difference between the changes in your data.

It's a good idea. Leaving the grid, especially the horizontal lines that connect the bars draws the reader's eye across the graph from left to right and makes the financial chart easier to analyze.