Grouped bar

Side-by-side bars per series. It sits in the Comparison group of the widget library.

When to use it#

Use a grouped bar to compare a few measures or series side by side within each category: income versus spending per month, this year versus last year per category, or balances per account across two banks.

When to pick something else#

• Only one measure? Use a Column chart or Bar chart.
• The parts add up to a meaningful total? Use a Stacked bar.
• Care about each part's share, not its size? Use a 100% stacked bar.
• Many dates? Use a Line chart with one line per series.

The data it needs#

Pick these in the Data tab of the inspector. BankSync suggests a column for each when your source has an obvious match.

Rows that share a category are combined before drawing: choose Sum, Average, Count, Min or Max on the value field. See Binding data.

Grouped bar options#

This chart has no options of its own; everything on its Style tab is the shared chart styling below.

Shared chart styling#

Every chart also has the shared styling options. These apply to this one:

• Legend: position, layout and which series show.
• Axes: titles, tick labels and number format.
• Grid, title, padding and background.
• Value labels on the marks.
• Categories and labels: top N with "Other", sort order, readable labels, the handwritten callout.
• Style: corner radius, line width, opacity and animation.
• Tooltip on hover.
• Click to filter: clicking a mark can filter the rest of the dashboard. See Filters and cross-filtering.
• Colours: follow the dashboard palette or pick one for this chart.

Messy data#

• Without a series field it draws plain single bars.
• When bars would be too thin to read, it switches to stacked bars automatically.
• More than 8 series: the 7 largest keep their colour and the rest merge into Other.
• Categories that don't fit fold into one Other (N) group; dates never fold.
• A missing value leaves a gap in the group; negative values extend below zero.

On a phone#

Groups get cramped at phone width, so it may fall back to stacked bars when there are many categories. Keep phone versions to two or three series and a short range, such as the last six months.

Related charts#

• Bar chart: Horizontal categorical bars
• Column chart: Vertical categorical bars
• Stacked bar: Composition per category
• 100% stacked bar: Composition as percentage
• Lollipop: Bars with circle endpoints
• Dot plot: Discrete category dots
• Bullet chart: Single value with target bands