Formula Field and Pipeline Issue

Wow, this is surprising.  For sure a Pipeline does not start until the record is actually saved.  It's hard to believe that the combined field is not populated when the record first saves as it only saves once, and presumably, you are saying that it saves correctly.

I have two thoughts. One is that instead of triggering when the record is saved, trigger the rule when the formula field is not equal to the data entry field and deselect the check box at the bottom of the form rule so that the rule fires all the time.

The other thought really should not be necessary,  because its hard to believe that the record is not being saved correctly, but the Pipeline could trigger and then it could have a step to lookup the trigger record and then have an Conditional Branch to create the parent if needed. That would delay the actual Pipeline to pull the record details.