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Get your people data into Flowstate
Work through this before you load anyone. It helps you decide where the truth about your people lives, choose how to load them, and give logins to the people who need them. Your HR or people data owner, your Finance lead and a Flowstate admin do it together, with your technical team if you choose a sync.
Before you start
- Set up sign-in and invite your team
- Set up your organisation basics. Locations, resource types and job roles need to exist before people can use them.
How people data flows through Flowstate
- Live people are your organisation as it is today. The forecast, budgets and every screen start from them.
- Scenarios are separate workspaces where you plan hires, moves and pay changes. Merging a scenario changes live data. See Live data and scenarios.
- Project tools and AI providers send work and spend, which Flowstate matches to your people by work email. Load people first, with everyone's work email.
1. Decide where the source of truth lives
What: Agree whether your HR system or Flowstate is where people, pay and leavers are kept up to date. Who: HR or people data owner, with your Finance lead. Where: Agree it between you, and write it down in your implementation plan. Done when: Everyone who changes people knows where to make a change.
Choose one:
| Your HR system is the source of truth | Flowstate is the source of truth | |
|---|---|---|
| Who changes pay, roles and leavers | HR, in your HR system. Flowstate follows it. | HR or Finance, in Flowstate. |
| An edit made in Flowstate | The next sync puts back anything your HR system sends. Details it doesn't send stay as you set them in Flowstate. | Stays as you made it. |
| How people get in | A sync from your HR system, often after a first spreadsheet load. | The spreadsheet import once, then changes on screen. |
| Planned changes | Plan them in scenarios. A merged change to something your HR system sends only lasts until the next sync, so make the real change in your HR system. Plan new hires as vacancies, and let the sync bring the person in once they're in your HR system. | Plan them in scenarios, and merge them into live data when they're approved. |
If you run budget cycles with your HR system as the source of truth, see Run a budget cycle for how an accepted budget becomes the one you report against.
2. Choose how to load people
What: Pick how people get into Flowstate, and how they're kept current. Who: HR or people data owner, with your technical team if you choose a sync. Where: The options below. Done when: You've chosen, and if it's a sync, your Flowstate contact and technical team have started on it.
Choose one, or a spreadsheet for the first load and a sync after that:
| Option | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet import, at Settings → Scenarios → Data Import | The first load, and organisations where Flowstate is the source of truth | Someone runs it by hand each time. It writes straight to live data and can't be undone. See Data import. |
| Sync your HR system | Keeping Flowstate in step with Workday, ADP Workforce Now, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, BambooHR, HiBob, Personio, Rippling, Deel or another HR system | Your Flowstate contact sets it up with your technical team. A scheduled sync doesn't set a person's location, resource type or line manager. See Connect your HR system. |
| REST API | A job in your own systems, or your data warehouse, that sends changes to Flowstate | Your technical team builds, runs and watches it. See Sync people from an HR system with the REST API. |
Connect your HR system. Flowstate syncs with Workday, ADP Workforce Now, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, BambooHR, HiBob, Personio, Rippling and Deel. Changes arrive in one of two ways:
- Scheduled sync: Flowstate reads your HR system on a schedule, from every 15 minutes to once a day.
- Event-driven: your HR system sends each change to your own integration platform, which updates Flowstate as it happens.
Each system's page recommends a route. See Connect your HR system.
Starting with a spreadsheet and syncing later? A sync recognises people by their ID in your HR system, not by email. Before the first sync, your technical team adds that ID to everyone who's already in Flowstate. Otherwise employees who are already there fail to sync, and contractors are added a second time.
3. Load your teams and people
What: Build your team structure, then load employees, contractors and vacancies the way you chose. Who: HR or people data owner. Where: Load your people and teams. Done when: The People, Contractors and Vacancies tabs under Resourcing → People and teams show everyone, each with a team, a salary or rate, a location and a resource type.
People records and logins are different things
- A person is an employee or contractor you pay. People are what the forecast, budgets and effort count.
- A user is a login to Flowstate, with a role that decides what they can see and change.
Most of the people you load will never sign in, and that's fine. Someone can also have a login without being one of your people, such as an outside accountant.
Flowstate links a login to a person when both have the same work email. That's how it knows which person is signed in, for example to show someone their own AI usage. So invite people with the work email that's on their people record.
Two things to know:
- A team's manager is a user, not a person record. Invite managers before you load teams, so they can be set as managers.
- Single sign-on and SCIM give people a login. They don't add anyone to your people data.
4. Invite the people who need to sign in
What: Give a login to everyone who plans, approves, manages a team or reports effort. Who: Flowstate admin. Where: Settings → Users & Access → Users, then Invite User. To let people on your email domains join by themselves, Settings → Organisation → User Enrollment. Done when: Everyone who needs Flowstate is under Active or Pending, with the same work email as their people record.
How to invite, resend and suspend: Invite people and manage their access. Whether to invite everyone or let people join: Choose how new people join.
5. Give each person the right role
What: Match each user's role to their job, especially who can see pay. Who: Flowstate admin, agreed with your Finance lead. Where: Settings → Users & Access → Users, then Edit User on their row. Done when: Everyone under Active has a role that fits their job, and only the people who should see salaries can.
The built-in roles are listed in Give each person the right role. What each permission allows: Roles and permissions.
You're set up when
- Everyone who changes people knows whether to do it in your HR system or in Flowstate.
- Everyone you pay is on the People, Contractors or Vacancies tab.
- If you sync, a few people you know match your HR system. For a scheduled sync, the latest run on the hook's Execution History tab shows Completed, with no failed records.
- The people who need Flowstate can sign in, each with the right role.
If something's not right
A change made in Flowstate went back. Your HR system is the source of truth, and the next sync sent its own value. Make the change in your HR system.
A sync fails for someone who's already in Flowstate. They were loaded by spreadsheet or added on screen, for example by filling a vacancy, before the sync knew their HR system ID. Ask your technical team to link them. See Adopt people who are already in Flowstate.
Someone signs in, but Flowstate doesn't show them their own data. The email on their login and the email on their people record are different. Correct the email on their people record, or in your HR system if that's the source of truth.
People brought in by a sync carry no overhead. A scheduled sync doesn't set a resource type. Set one on each person in Flowstate, or have your integration platform send it.