Comparing five regions' monthly sales with a stacked bar chart

PL-300 By islever Editorial Last updated Sep 25, 2026

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Short answer

B A stacked bar chart gives five directly comparable bars of absolute sales per region.

Question

You need to use Power BI to create a visual that will allow users to compare the sales performance of five sales regions for the current month. Which visual should you use?

a line chart
a stacked bar chart Correct Answer
a 100% stacked bar chart
a waterfall chart

Key Takeaways

A bar chart is the canonical compare-across-categories visual; with a single measure per region, its stacked variant renders five directly comparable bars for the current month.

A visual must let users compare the sales performance of five sales regions for the current month, so the chart type must support direct magnitude comparison across categories.

Common mistake: Choosing the 100% stacked variant — it rescales every bar to fill 100% and shows proportional share, destroying the absolute magnitude comparison the requirement asks for.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

Comparing performance across categories is the defining strength of bar charts: each region gets one bar whose length encodes its sales for the current month, making the five regions immediately rankable. The stacked bar chart (B) handles this single-measure comparison perfectly, with each region's absolute value visible and comparable.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

A line chart (A) emphasizes trends across a continuous axis — the right tool for months over time, but for one month across five discrete regions it produces a misleading line through unrelated categories. A 100% stacked bar chart (C) normalizes bars to equal length, showing each region's share of the total rather than its actual sales, which defeats the comparison goal. A waterfall chart (D) explains how an initial value changes through additions and subtractions — a contribution-flow story, not a ranking of regions.

Community Comment Notes

Commenters agree on B, with one noting a clustered bar would be the natural pick but the stacked variant is the closest listed option. Another stresses that comparison is easier on a stacked bar than a 100% stacked bar because absolute lengths remain meaningful.

Official Reference

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/consumer/end-user-visual-type

This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Community Votes

100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer B. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 5 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 5

Jayaruwan 👍 3 Answered B

Comparing is easy with stacked bar chart than 100% stacked bar chart
Arth_1111 👍 2 Answered B

Correct answer should be B - Stacked Bar Chart
jaume 👍 1 Answered B

It would be even easier with a clustered Bar chart but since this option is not available, let's stick to the stacked version. Not sure why it's not also possible the 100% option; it's my understanding the difference is reporting sales in absolute values or as % of total values, comparison would still be possible
Philip9845 👍 1 Answered B

I chose option B. Crossed checked with chatgpt as well.
Arth_1111 👍 3 Answered B

B is correct

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