Yes, I meant that you want to be sure you have the positive panel wire on the positive controller terminal and the negative panel wire on the negative input terminal. You also have battery positive and negative on the controller and they have to be correct.
Most multimeters will show a minus sign on the screen when you have reversed the meter leads. This means that if you were to put the red meter lead on the negative battery post and the black meter lead on the positive battery post you could see 12.x volts but there would probably be a little minus sign up there if you then reversed the leads and put the red meter lead on positive in the black meter lead on negative you should see 12.x volts without the minus sign