Jira Automation for Epic “Consumed Hours” field behaving inconsistently

Question

Hi all,

I’m encountering a problem with a Jira Cloud automation that recalculates “Consumed Hours” in epics based on worklogs from Tempo. I suspect there’s a bug or misconfiguration, and I'm looking for advice.

Situation

* I have epics representing hour packages for clients.
* Each epic has several tasks, with hours logged in Tempo.
* An automation was created to:* Update a custom field “Billable Seconds” on tasks with Tempo worklogs.
* Recalculate “Consumed Hours” in tasks and the parent epic.
* Calculate “Remaining Hours” as Contracted Hours – Consumed Hours.
* Transition the epic to Inactive when remaining hours reach zero.

Observed issues

* Moving several tasks from one epic to another triggers recalculation. Initially, it works fine, but at a certain point:* The Consumed Hours field in the epic decreases instead of increasing.
* Total hours in Tempo remain correct.

* Editing a worklog on a task sometimes resets its consumed hours to zero, but editing another worklog fixes it.
* Logs show messages like:
“The work item didn’t match the specified JQL. The chosen rule actor doesn’t have permissions…”
* The automation runs as Automation for Jira.

What Isuspect

* Some tasks may be inaccessible to the automation actor due to permission schemes, security levels, or project roles.
* Using JQL conditions might be causing inconsistent execution.

What I'm looking for

* Guidance on how to make such an automation robust across epics and tasks.
* Recommendations on JQL vs Issue Field conditions for these recalculations.
* Any known issues with Automation for Jira losing access to tasks after moving them between epics.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Thank you for the follow-up, @Laura Jiménez Goicoechea

As other people may be interested in your fix / solution, I recommend:

* post a separate answer to your own question describing what you did
* accept your own answer to raise visibility to the solution

Thanks!

Laura Jiménez Goicoechea_3702tt · Answer

Hi Bill,

Sorry for the late reply, my access to the community has not been very consistent lately!

We finally found a fix for the issue, but I really appreciate your reply and your help.

Kind regards,

Laura

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Laura Jiménez Goicoechea

For a question like this, context is important for the community to help.  Please post the following:

* an image of your complete automation rule in a single image for continuity
* images of any relevant actions / conditions / branches
* an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution
* for each symptom not working as expected, explain why you believe that to be the case

Until we see those...

Without seeing your rule and the work items involved, I suspect this is either a timing, a work item update, chained rule execution, and / or rule scope issue.  When you see several symptoms like you describe, there may be multiple causes, and so working on them one-by-one may help.

Also you describe moving Tasks from one Epic to another.  That will likely require updating both Epics: the original one and the new one.  Again without seeing your rules, this may require a more complicated rule structure to handle the change of parent.

Please note this is only one of the possible ways the Epic / Task relationship could change in a manner which impacts your field totals / values.  To learn more, please see this article describing related work item sum / synching:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/Automation-concepts-Sum-or-Synch-Fields-with-Parent-and-Child/ba-p/3162890

Kind regards,
Bill