Why am I getting a negative number on the Created. Vs Resolved Reporting

[Anne Dixon]

I am creating reports for my teams. When I added the Created vs. Resolved report it shows the team has a negative number. I want to be able to explain that to my teams prior to rolling out this report. But I havent been able to figure out why it shows a negative number. Can someone please explain?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hi Anne,

This usually means people are re-opening issues that your team thing they have fixed.

This is a very jira-speak thing to say though, I usually find that this report does not make sense (i.e has negative numbers) because the workflow is wrong, not the teams working with it.

The report is technically accurate because it is showing us numbers that are just "issues unresolved" vs "issues resolved". 

The usual problem with it is that a workflow is not setting or clearing the resolution when it should.  A resolution should be set (via a screen with a resolution field, or by a post-function that sets it) when an issue goes from any status that says "issue needs some attention of some sort" to a status of "we're done with this".  Even if the end-state is cancelled or won't-do, the resolution should be set.  Equally, the resolution should be cleared (not set to something else like "reopened", it needs to be cleared out completely) when an issue goes from "done" to "not done"