Sum subtask story points to the story in Jira

Your team breaks stories into subtasks and estimates the subtasks, and you want the story to show their total. On Atlassian Community it reads “My goal is to automatically sum the Story Points from all Sub-tasks and update the parent Story with the total.” This page gives Jira’s own answer, the Automation rule and where it stops, then what Sumline does.

What Jira does by itself

Story points are not added up. Atlassian’s request to sum sub-task estimates into stories, with 1,735 votes, was closed as “Answered” in February 2021, pointing to an Automation template rather than a feature (JRACLOUD-92573, read 12 October 2026).
Time is added up, one level. A story’s Σ time tracking figures include its subtasks’ time; story points have no Σ (JRACLOUD-70150).
Two story-points fields. Company-managed spaces use “Story Points”, team-managed spaces “Story point estimate” (Atlassian’s smart values reference).

The Automation rule

Atlassian’s knowledge base rule does it with a lookup. Writing into a field of its own keeps the story’s own estimate:

Create a number field, say Subtask points, and add it to stories, tasks and bugs.
Trigger: Field value changed → Story Points (in a team-managed space, Story point estimate).
Condition: Work item fields condition → Issue Type equals Sub-task.
Branch: Branch rule / related work items → Parent.
Inside the branch, Lookup work items with the JQL parent = {{issue.key}}.
Inside the branch, Edit work item → Subtask points → {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum|0}}; in a team-managed space, {{lookupIssues.Story point estimate.sum|0}}.

Atlassian’s version writes the sum into the story’s own Story Points. That replaces whatever the story was estimated at, so the two can no longer be compared, and every report then reads the subtasks’ sum as the story’s estimate.

Where it stops:

It runs only when a subtask’s points change. A subtask deleted or moved to another story leaves the old total until something else changes, and subtasks estimated before the rule existed need a one-off backfill.
One level. Carrying the total on to the epic is another rule; see Sum story points from subtasks to epics in Jira. If the story keeps its own points too, adding both levels counts the same work twice.
One field per rule, so a site with both kinds of space needs both.
Every run counts toward your site’s Automation usage.

With Sumline

Sumline is our app. It adds subtask points up to the story without a rule or a field:

On the story itself, in the Details column, as soon as it is installed, and in the Sumline panel with each subtask’s points.
The right field in each space, found automatically, so a story in a team-managed space reads “Story point estimate”. See Team-managed and company-managed spaces.
One level counts when both are estimated. A story estimated at 5 whose subtasks add up to 3 counts as 3, the subtasks by default, and the story’s own 5 is listed as set aside; an admin can make the parent win instead (Settings).
Unestimated subtasks are named rather than counted as zero.
On up to the epic and initiative (initiatives need Jira Premium), with original estimate, time spent and remaining alongside.

What it does not do: Sumline only reads, so the story’s total is not a Jira field you can search with JQL or put on a board card. How it counts is in How the numbers are calculated.