On 10th September 2025, Wagestream became known as 'Stream'
Overview
This article lists considerations and checks for a Customer to go through, prior to going live with Stream.
Dependencies
For employees to be seen in Stream through the API, they need to:
- Have a Fourth Account - these are login details for the Fourth app, which is used to access Stream and Employee Self Service. Personal email addresses are used for Fourth Accounts
- Be attached to a payroll Company and Pay Basis within the Payroll module (this excludes any non-UK sites) in Fourth’s HR & Payroll product
Internal Communication & Manager Awareness
As part of the go-live plan, Stream will send a series of emails to employees with information about Stream, the benefits, and how to download the app. To support this, it is good practice to have internal communications planned for managers and employees to raise awareness of the Stream benefits and to highlight changes.
As part of internal communications, Fourth recommends:
- Using Fourth Engage or another internal platform to communicate about Stream and the go-live date
- Displaying posters provided by Fourth and Stream at site level and on Engage
- Raising in a manager meeting/staff briefing
The following best practice processes and changes are recommended to highlight to managers:
- Bank details - when an employee enrols with Stream their bank details in the HR Module will be replaced by their Stream account details. This happens through the API syncing and managers will see the name of the account as ‘Stream’. Mangers should be informed that this is not an error, just an indication that the employee has enrolled
- Completing the days on the Rota/actualising the days on the schedule - the hours that employees have worked will push to Stream based on the days being completed/actualised in the system. Best practice is to do this daily, but the process is a good one to reinforce with the management teams
- Terminating employees - best practice is to terminate employees promptly. Terminating in the HR module will pause the employee in Stream automatically
- Long term sickness for salaried employees - managers need to inform their Head Office teams so that an employee’s Stream account is paused if they are off work for a prolonged period. This should also be the process for maternity and other periods off work for salaried employees.
As part of Readiness for go live, Fourth advises:
- Pausing salaried employees who are currently on maternity leave, long term sickness or another long-term absence reason, after the Stream Partner Portal training has taken place
- To communicate with managers to reinforce the best practices highlighted above. The Rota Status Summary Report can be used to check what sites are completing their Rota/Schedules daily
- To send the provided ‘Bank Letter’ to your bank to let them know of the first payroll with Stream live - which says that they will see the Stream accounts with the same sort code and that this is not an error
- To check if any employees have a Building Society account in the system. These do not facilitate faster payments and therefore won’t be suitable for Stream
- To include Stream as a benefit in employee handbooks & documents
- Updating the GDPR policy around sharing employees’ details with a 3rd party if needed
- To highlight any expenses or bonuses to Stream made outside of the pay date. These need to be flagged in Stream so they are not used to pay back a transfer. This process will be highlighted in the Partner Portal training;
- To highlight any potential changes to payroll schedules and timings to Stream
- To identify any locations or pay basis that should be excluded from Stream. These will be whitelisted in Stream, but the users will still see the Stream icon within their Fourth app
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