Stacked chart

[wpryan]

Hi All, I'm ashamed to ask what should be a ridiculously simple question, but I don't work much with charting...

I want a single stacked column chart to show expenses relative to income. What I want it to look like, is the "whole" column have the the income amount and the expenses to be within that area. If I put the expenses as a negative value, then the expenses column goes below the zero line, if it's a positive number then the chart area expands upwards. Essentially what I'm looking for is to have the expenses "fill" the income column so we can quickly see what has been spent relative to what is available.

[wpryan]

Looking further at this online, it seems what I want is a 100% stacked column, but this doesn't appear as an option in Excel 2013.

[Andy Pope]

Is this example something you can work with?

All the values need to be positive.

Create a stacked column chart, you will need to switch row/columns so each data point is a series.
Select Income series and move to secondary axis.
Delete secondary axis
Format income to have border but no fill

You can also change the Gap width so the income column is wider, this way if the expenditure exceeds income you can see it,

[wpryan]

Thanks for your help. It was just what I was looking for. Charting isn't so intuitive!