2025 Week 9 | Power BI: From stacked bar chart to bullet chart

Power BI, Workout Wednesday / By

Introduction

I’m incredibly honored to be part of this amazing group of Power BI enthusiasts, and I couldn’t be more excited to share my very first Workout Wednesday challenge with you all!

Have you ever looked at a visualization and thought, there has to be a better way to present this data? This week, we’re tackling a common challenge in Power BI: converting a stacked bar chart into a bullet chart to enhance clarity and comparability.

Bullet charts are powerful alternatives to traditional bar charts, providing more context with comparative measures, targets, and progress indicators—all within a compact design. However, Power BI doesn’t have a native bullet chart visualization, so we’ll need to get creative with a stacked bar chart to achieve the same effect.

Your challenge this week: take a stacked bar chart and transform it into a well-designed bullet chart, ensuring key performance indicators are clearly displayed.

I can’t wait to see how you approach this challenge and hear your feedback on my first Workout Wednesday! Let’s dive in and build something great together.

 

Tip: Chart Type: Stacked Bar Chart (not 100%!)

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is WoW-Week-9.gif

Requirements

  • Download the starter file that contains the dataset.
  • Add the following measures:
    • [1] Sales Amount (“Revenue”) 
      • Revenue = SUM(FactSales[Sum of SalesAmount])
    • [2] Month over Month Revenue (“MoM”)
      • MoM = CALCULATE([Revenue], DATEADD(‘Date'[Date], -1, MONTH))
    • [3] Variances [%] (“% MoM”)
      • % MoM =
        VAR __PREV_MONTH = CALCULATE([Revenue], DATEADD(‘Date'[Date], -1, MONTH)),
        RETURN
            DIVIDE([Revenue] – __PREV_MONTH, __PREV_MONTH)

    • [4] Variances Color (“Up and Down Color”)

      • Up and Down Color =
        VAR _Item = [% MoM]
        VAR _Label =
        SWITCH(
            True,
              _Item = 0,  “grey” ,
              _Item > 0,  “green”,
              _Item < 0,  “red”
        )
        RETURN
        _Label

Dataset

Data for this challenge can be found in the starter file.

There are 3 tables needed for this exercise:

  1. Date
  2. FactSales
  3. DimSalesTerritory

Share

After you finish your workout, share on social media using the hashtags #WOW2025 and #PowerBI. Tag me (Kathrin) on LinkedIn!
On Bluesky, tag @mmarie.bsky.social, @shan-gsd.bsky.social, and @merrykerry.bsky.social.

Solution

Download the solution file!

I have a video on YouTube for this, it is a bit older but it will sure help you to get the solution:

https://youtu.be/LxxaETpga0I?si=14N2jenhx-pF001v

Scroll to Top