Burnup reports

A burnup report shows how much work a team has completed over time – while also showing how scope changes affect delivery. Unlike burndown charts, which focus on remaining work, a burnup visualizes completed work against total scope, making progress easy to read even when requirements shift.

With Tempo Timesheets, burnup reporting goes beyond story points. By grounding progress in logged time, Tempo helps teams, managers, and stakeholders see how real effort translates into delivery across sprints, projects, and long-running initiatives.

What is a burnup report?

A burnup report is a chart that plots two lines over time: Completed work (how much has been finished so far) and total scope (the full amount of work planned, including any changes).

As work gets done, the completed line moves upward. When scope changes – such as new work being added – the total scope line shifts to match. That makes burnup reports useful in environments where scope is expected to evolve.

Jira and agile teams use burnup reports to track delivery progress without masking scope changes, communicate progress to stakeholders, and support forecasting for releases or longer-term initiatives. Burndown charts are more common, but some teams prefer to see how much work they have done rather than how much they have left. Scope creep is easier to spot in a burnup.

The value of burnup reports

Burnup reports offer clarity where traditional reports fall short. They keep teams honest when scope changes. Instead of hiding scope creep, burnups make it visible – so teams can respond early.

Stakeholders can see what has been completed and how scope has evolved. By comparing the pace of completed work to the pace of scope growth, teams can forecast delivery timelines with more confidence. When work is added mid-stream, burnups avoid the confusion that can arise in burndown charts.

Burnup reporting with Tempo Timesheets

Tempo brings a time-based perspective to burnup reporting by combining Jira issue data with worklog data from Tempo Timesheets.

With Tempo, burnup reporting can reflect logged hours instead of estimates alone, progress across multiple teams or projects, and effort invested over time – not just task completion.

Because Tempo captures when and where time is logged, burnup reports can show how completed effort accumulates against planned or total scope, giving a more reliable view of delivery.

What makes Tempo's burnup reporting different

• Time-based progress, not just story points

Most burnup reports focus on issues or story points. Tempo adds depth with burnup views based on time logged, so teams can see how effort translates into outcomes.

• Flexible scope across Jira

Tempo's reporting and integrations let burnup reports span multiple Jira projects, epics or initiatives, and teams, roles, or accounts. That makes burnup reporting useful for sprints as well as cross-team initiatives and long-running work.

• Works inside Jira

Tempo Timesheets is built for the Atlassian ecosystem. Teams log time, manage work, and analyze progress without leaving Jira – reducing friction and improving data quality.

• Powerful reporting and visualization

Combine Timesheets with Structure or Custom Charts for Jira to build burnup visualizations that reflect complex scopes, evolving work, and real delivery patterns.

Create burnup reports with Custom Charts

If you want to stay on top of project progress and catch scope creep, a burnup report is the right tool. With Custom Charts for Jira and Confluence, you can build highly customizable burnup reports on a Jira dashboard or Confluence page.

Standard Jira burnup charts

Jira ships with a burnup chart out of the box. It's a project report, not a dashboard gadget – so you can't add it to a Jira dashboard, and you can't customize it.

The standard Jira burnup chart also reports on a single sprint only. You can't view progress on an epic or release, and you can't see more than one sprint at once. That's a problem for enterprises with multiple agile teams that need progress across all their work.

Build flexible burnup reports with Custom Charts

Custom Charts lets you build issue-history reports on Jira dashboards and Confluence pages.

With Custom Charts, you can build burnups of individual or multiple sprints, epics, releases, teams, and projects. That's useful for individual agile teams and Scrum Masters or product owners, as well as program managers who want a bird's-eye view of whether every team is on track.

With a wide range of customization options, you can shape burnups to match the needs of your team and stakeholders.

Add the Custom Charts gadget to a Jira dashboard, or the Custom Charts macro to a Confluence page. To create a burnup or burndown, choose a 2D chart, select "Issue History" from the Chart By dropdown, and "Status" from the Group By dropdown.

Create time-based burnup reports with Timesheets

If you use Timesheets to track time on customer accounts, you can build a burnup that shows the progress of hours worked on an account.

Use the Account Custom Budget Burnup Gadget on your Jira dashboard. You can insert a custom budget (using the Insert goal field) and period. The gadget gives you flexibility in how data is visualized and helps managers and executives monitor account progress, plan resources, and allocate capacity.

Accurate, consistent time tracking is the foundation of a useful Timesheets burnup. Encourage your team to log time regularly so the data stays reliable.

When new work is added, the total scope line adjusts – making scope growth obvious. Managers review progress trends to assess delivery risk and capacity. Stakeholders use the report to understand progress without misreading scope changes.

Best practices for burnup reporting

Log time consistently so burnup data reflects real effort. Review scope changes regularly to understand their impact on delivery. Use burnups alongside burndowns for a balanced view of progress and remaining work.

Filter reports by team or project to see where effort is concentrated. Use historical burnup data to improve future planning and forecasting.

Get more from your agile reporting

Tempo Timesheets turns burnup reports into a reliable source of truth by grounding progress in real work performed. By combining time tracking, flexible reporting, and deep Jira integration, Tempo helps teams move past surface-level metrics and gain confidence in how progress, scope, and effort line up.

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