Sometimes, you wish to see the numbers being added over time or for multiple categories. The running total can give you an idea about how your business is doing, depending on the slope of the line. This insightful feature is also called the cumulative sum. Let me show you how to obtain this!
The cumulative sum can be used in the bar-, column-, area-, line- and combination charts. It can be done for data over time, as well as for numeric or even hierarchical data.
It only takes a few clicks to obtain. After adding your data to the chart, you click on the ‘Data’ symbol at the top right corner. After clicking the little ‘gear’ guy of the measurement slot, you can choose ‘cumulative sum’ as the aggregation. You’ll see the chart adapt immediately. Easy, right?
The cumulative sum always starts from the first value it recognizes. You should keep this in mind when adding a date filter.
For example, you have data from December 2022 until December 2023. The cumulative sum starts with the first value, in this case December 2022, and sums up all the numbers from then on. When a date filter is activated starting from July 2023, the sum starts from there on and does not take the numbers before that date into account. This is important to know to make sure you don’t have a wrong view on your business.
It might be nice not to show the ‘0’ value on the Y-axes. This can easily be adapted in the settings of the chart. Choose the ‘Variable’ as the ‘Measure axis type’.
Next to that, you can make the line more smooth by choosing ‘Monotone’ as the line interpolation. Changing the stroke width and adapt the color can make your dashboard even more personalized.