Overview of The Carbon Ledger
What do we do here?
The Carbon Bookkeeping
The Introduction to Carbon Accounting Course will provide a solid foundation for understanding the fundamentals of carbon accounting and classifying emissions.
Using the GL Account, Supplier, and transaction Description to inform what the transaction relates to, you can assign the transaction to an emissions source that best fits the activity of the transaction.
Only using the GL Account, or the Supplier may be appropriate for some assessments, but for most assessments not including this detail won’t allow you to assign meaningful emission sources, you will want to use all three.
Example - a Construction GL Account may include transactions for wood, metal, concrete, consumables, and labour etc, all of which vary significantly in their emissions footprint.
Picking Emissions Sources
Emission sources are typically created by taking the emissions of an entire country and dividing it up into buckets, often down to an industry level such as Forestry Products, but sometimes they are broken down further to products like Wood or Paper. Due to this, there isn't often a perfect fit between the activity of the business and the emission source, so we just need to select the best fit.
Example - If I bought paper and the Paper Emissions Source didn't exist, Forestry Products would be a fine Emissions Source to select. But if the Paper Emissions Source did exist it would be a better fit and so I would select it.
When selecting emission source, you can now see what emission factors are available, allowing you to make even more informed decisions about the emissions sources you're applying, and plan ahead for how you might improve the quality of your assessment with Primary or Activity Data in the next steps of your assessment. You can also click into the source link to understand which emission factor database the numbers have come from.
For more detailed walkthrough and how to apply that professional judgement visit Selecting an Emissions Source
How to be efficient and detailed at the same time!
📊 Column Management
You can click the 3 dots in the top right of the Carbon Ledger table to add additional columns, such as the Tracking Category to make the process more informed and efficient. You can also remove, resize and reorder columns to suit your needs!
🔻 Sorting Columns
You can click any column header to sort that column, grouping items of a similar nature together. You can CTRL + click additional columns to sort by multiple columns at once!
Tip for efficient coding: CTRL + click on GL Account, followed by Supplier, followed by Amount and then Amount again to show the largest spend items first. This will put all transactions within each GL Account together, then transactions from the same supplier together and bring your attention to the biggest spend items first.
💪 Bulk Selection
After grouping similar transactions together, the same emissions source will likely be applicable to a large group of transactions. After clicking on a transaction you can continue to select other transactions by clicking on them and any emissions source selected will be applied to all transactions selected, which can then be reconciled as a group. You can also select a transaction, SHIFT + click another transaction which will select all the transactions in between, so you can select hundreds of transactions in just 2 clicks!
🧠 Smart Suggestions
After selecting an Emissions Source for a transaction, Sumday will remember the details of the transaction and the decision you made, so if you encounter a similar transaction Sumday will provide a Smart Suggestion to help you categorise transactions more efficiently and more consistently! Look out for the smart sparkle ✨
Always review the suggestions before reconciling the transactions.
📝 Rules
You can create transactions rules to automatically assign Emissions Sources to transactions if they meet the conditions you set. This can allow you to almost entirely automate the categorisation process, while being in control of the decisions made in the assessment.
Example - I can create a rule that says if the GL Account is “Consulting” and the Supplier is “Lucky Lawyers” I want the Legal Services Emissions Source to be applied automatically.
For more detailed walkthrough visit Rules Feature
🗄️ Tracking Categories
You can create categories to track groups and sub categories that’s most relevant to you, think location, department, project, cost code and more! Use this to start making tracking carbon accounting part of business as usual, so you can get meaningful insights monthly or quarterly and share with stakeholders to drive action rather than looking backwards once a year.
Example - I can track categories by office location and assign transactions belonging to each such as certain electricity bills belonging to our Burnie HQ.
For more detailed walkthrough visit Tracking Categories Feature
Last updated on September 4, 2024