Formating bar chart labels

I've created what I call a waterfall chart, a bar chart moving from budget to actual with the explaning variances moving up or down depending on the given periods results. a bunch of nested if statement pick out the color red for negative and blue for positive. but the labels appear inside the bar. How do I get the label either just above or just below the bar? Preferably just above with positive results and just below with negative...

so the data looks likt this:
Target Income Expense Income Result
Bgt GP OP Exp Non-Op Actual

pretax NI Before Alloc 3,939 3,759
New Base 3,604 3,604 3,656
positive var Above - 52 102
Pos Var Below - - -
Neg Var Above 334 - -
Neg Var Below - - -
ending base 3,939 3,604 3,656 3,759 3,759

I have been moving the labels around manually for years and wondered how I might automate this?

Thank You for your consideration!
Cheers
grasstoe

Waterfall data.pngWaterfall chart.png
Hopefully easier to read, sorry first time posting

Excellent, Thank You.

I have read several references to this XY-scatter series, now I will have to see if our IT department will let me use it. I tried explaining what I was looking for to a friend and realized the existing limitation came from using a stacked bar graph. I made the base of the stack transparent leaving only the variance and had forgotten that a full stack was still present... So this will let me reference cells with the data label values I want conveyed and then reference other cells that tell it where on the graph to position the labels?

I am excitied to try this out. It may take a while to get through IT but I will report back when I get the chance to play with this.

Cheers
grasstoe

Wow,

there is a ton of great stuff there, but I am not sure how I manually position values like 52 above a bar that tops out at 3,656? Maybe I didn't find the right page on your link?

Cheers,
grasstoe

amazing Thanks you