Workforce
Workforce is where you plan and track the people who do the work: who works for you, what they cost, which team they’re in and what they’re working on. It’s also where finance turns that into figures to sign off: the forecast, team budgets, capitalisation and R&D tax claims.
Its menu has four groups: Delivery, Resourcing, Insights and Finance. If your organisation uses the area switcher, Workforce is its first area.
Get going
Do these first, in this order. Each one makes the next one more accurate.
- Load your people and teams. Bring in employees, contractors and planned hires, and give every team a manager. See Load your people and teams.
- Connect your project tool. Jira, Linear or Azure DevOps sends projects and ticket activity in. See Connect your project tool.
- Set up your projects. Give each project an owner, dates and a cost centre. See Set up your projects.
- Submit your team’s first week. Team leads check what each person worked on and submit it. See Review and submit your team’s week.
- Read the forecast. Check what the workforce will cost, month by month. See Read and export the forecast.
For a whole outcome, such as a budget cycle or a CapEx target, follow the matching set-up checklist.
What do you want to do?
| I want to… | Start here |
|---|---|
| Add someone, change their pay or record a leaver | Employees |
| Plan a hire | Vacancies |
| Put people on a project | Allocations |
| Find people for a project | Find people for a project |
| Try out a change before committing to it | Scenarios |
| Submit my team’s week | Review and submit your team’s week |
| Keep projects and initiatives up to date | Manage projects |
| See what we ship and what it cost | Engineering insights |
| See what the workforce will cost | Read and export the forecast |
| Set next year’s budget with my team managers | Start a budget run |
| Close a month’s capitalisation | Capitalisation |
| Prepare an R&D tax claim | Review suggested R&D claims |
| Build a dashboard or report | Analytics & reporting |
Where things are in the app
| Menu | What’s there | Guides |
|---|---|---|
| Resourcing → People and teams | People, teams, contractors, vacancies, Playground and allocations | Employees, Teams, Allocations |
| Resourcing → Staffing | Who’s free, who fits a project and which skills are short | Staffing |
| Delivery → Roadmap | Projects, initiatives and the spend timeline | Roadmap |
| Delivery → Effort reporting | Each team’s week, reviews and submissions | Effort reporting |
| Delivery → Functional groups | Your functional structure and its positions | Functional groups |
| Insights → Engineering insights | Pull requests, flow, cost and AI impact | Engineering insights |
| Insights → Analytics & reporting | Ready-made analytics, dashboards and reports | Analytics & reporting |
| Insights → Business metrics | What each function produces and what each unit costs | Business metrics |
| Finance → Forecast | Planned cost by month | Forecast |
| Finance → Budgets | Budget runs, team budgets and requests | Budgets |
| Finance → Capitalisation | CapEx figures, targets and justifications | Capitalisation |
| Finance → R&D tax claims | Suggested and completed R&D claims | R&D tax claims |
AI spending, agents and copilots have their own guides in Flowstate Helm.
How the numbers connect
flowchart LR
P["People, pay and teams"] --> A["Allocations"]
A --> FC["Forecast"]
FC --> B["Budgets"]
PT["Your project tool"] --> E["Weekly effort"]
GH["GitHub"] --> E
P --> E
E --> S["Submitted weeks"]
S --> C["Capitalisation · R&D claims · Spend timeline"]- Planned cost comes from allocations: who is planned to work where. The forecast and budgets use it.
- Actual cost comes from effort: the share of each person’s day spent on each project, never hours. Team leads check and submit it each week. Capitalisation, R&D claims and the spend timeline use it.
- The two don’t mix. A budget doesn’t change what’s capitalised, and correcting effort doesn’t change the forecast. Both use the same day rate for each person.
How every cost is worked out is on How costs are calculated. How Flowstate fits together shows what feeds what.
Live data and scenarios
Changes you make on these screens save straight away to live data. If you’re inside a scenario, they stay in the scenario until someone approves and merges it. See Live data and scenarios.
Connected apps Workforce uses
- HR systems keep people, pay and teams up to date. See Connect your HR system.
- Jira, Linear and Azure DevOps send projects and ticket activity. See Jira, Linear and Azure DevOps.
- GitHub sends pull requests for effort and engineering insights. See GitHub.
- Slack sends reminders and approvals. See Slack.