Jira hierarchy levels: subtask, epic and above

Jira organizes work in levels: a subtask under a story, a story under an epic, and, on some plans, levels above the epic. People search for it as “jira hierarchy levels”, “jira hierarchy levels above epic” and “jira hierarchy initiative epic story”. On Atlassian Community it reads “I would like to know how to create an issuetype ( work item ) above epic level 1. maybe level 2 ? if Sub-task is Level -1 and story is Level 0” (Community, June 2025). This page lists the levels, which plan adds the ones above the epic, what Jira adds up at each, and what Sumline does.

The levels Jira has

• Three by default. “By default, Jira supports three levels of hierarchy”: epics at the top, standard work items such as tasks, stories and bugs in the middle, subtasks at the bottom, which can only be a child (Atlassian, What are work types?). Their level numbers are 1 for Epic, 0 for Story and -1 for Subtask (Atlassian, Configure the work type hierarchy).
• Above the epic needs Premium or Enterprise. “Jira Premium and Enterprise customers can also create and manage additional levels in their work type hierarchy”, and a new level “will be created at the top” (same page). A Jira administrator adds one under Settings › Work items › Work type hierarchy. The change applies to all company-managed spaces in the site.
• The names are the admin’s. A level above the epic has the name your site gives it; your site may call the first one Initiative.
• Changing it has a cost. “Changing your work type hierarchy will break existing parent and child relationships between your work items”, and a removed level’s work types go back to the Story level (same page).

So the order, from the top: any levels your admin added, then Epic, then Story, Task and Bug, then Subtask. On Free and Standard the top is the epic. Sumline can also roll up a work type through links, on any plan; see below.

What Jira adds up at each level

• Nothing by default for story points. There is no Σ for them, and the request to sum story points for an epic is “Not Being Considered” (JRACLOUD-90636, September 2024).
• Time, one level up. Σ fields add a parent’s sub-tasks to its own time: “Time estimate and time tracking currently roll-up to 1 level up based on the hierarchy. The roll-up doesn’t go beyond that” (JRACLOUD-70150, June 2025). Subtask time reaches the story, not the epic, and nothing reaches an initiative.
• Plans adds up every level, on Premium and Enterprise: estimates from “child work items in all hierarchy levels”, inside the plan (Atlassian).

For the Automation rule per level, see Sum story points to the epic in Jira Cloud and Sum subtask story points to the story. The initiative’s own question, its story points and % complete, has its own page: Story points and % complete on a Jira initiative.

With Sumline

Sumline is our app. It adds up four fields from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top, story points, original estimate, time logged and remaining:

• Every level: subtasks, then the stories, tasks, bugs and requests above them, epics, and a level above epics: initiatives on Jira Premium, or, on any plan, a work type an admin rolls up through links in Settings.
• Children in other spaces count under their parent too.
• Each estimate counted once: a story estimated at 8 whose subtasks add up to 8 counts as 8, and the value set aside is named.
• Two percentages on every parent: by estimate, and by work item count across every level below it.
• Rows that open to the work items under them, in a space’s tab and in a table across spaces.

Sumline only reads, so its totals are not a Jira field and cannot be used in JQL. It does not add or change a level: the hierarchy is the one your site has. How every number is worked out is in How the numbers are calculated.