Carbon accounting and CSRD: where to start when you have never measured

A carbon footprint assessment rarely starts with software. It starts with a simpler, and more uncomfortable, question: knowing where to look for the data, who will carry it over time, and what you are actually trying to achieve. Many organisations buy a tool before answering these questions, then start over a year later when the first choice no longer fits. This guide walks through, step by step, how we support an SME or a mid-sized company tackling its first carbon accounting exercise, whether or not a regulatory obligation is driving it.

The three Scopes, without the jargon

The GHG Protocol, the international reference framework, splits emissions into three perimeters.

• Scope 1: what you burn directly. The boiler, the company vehicles.
• Scope 2: the energy you buy. Mainly electricity.
• Scope 3: everything else, upstream and downstream. Purchases, freight, employee travel, use of the products sold, end of life.

Scope 3 generally represents the largest share, and it is the hardest to collect since the data is not yours. It is also the one that gets postponed, and that ends up blocking the rest.

What collection actually looks like

On the ground, each Scope maps to a clearly identifiable data source, and that is what makes the exercise more approachable than it first appears.

• For Scope 1: gas or heating oil bills, fuel logs for company vehicles, refrigerant gas registers if you use any.
• For Scope 2: electricity bills, contract by contract, site by site. It is often the easiest data to gather, because it is already centralised by the finance team.
• For Scope 3: the purchasing ledger, travel expense reports, freight data shared by logistics providers, and the characteristics of sold products when their use generates emissions.

None of these sources requires a new tool to exist: they already exist, scattered across systems that do not talk to each other. The first task is to identify them, then decide how they will be connected.

It also helps to name, for each source, who currently holds it. The energy bills usually sit with finance or facilities. The purchasing ledger sits with procurement or accounting. Travel expenses sit with HR or the expense tool. Freight data sits with logistics, and often with the carriers themselves rather than with anyone inside the company. Mapping these owners before asking for the data saves weeks later, because the request goes straight to the right desk instead of circulating through several departments first.

Seven questions before choosing a tool

We use a qualification assistant, Klem, which asks seven questions before any software is mentioned. They are usually enough to tell whether an organisation should equip itself now, or wait.

1. Perimeter: one entity, a group, an entire value chain?
2. Size: it determines which obligations apply.
3. Maturity: first assessment, or a history already built up?
4. Regulation: which texts apply to you, and by when?
5. Trajectory: are you aiming at a science-based target, or internal tracking?
6. Objective: comply, steer a reduction, answer a customer placing orders?
7. Deadline: the date that governs everything else.

These seven answers are not only useful for choosing software. They are mainly useful for framing the project internally, before it turns into a vague effort carried by a single person. A leadership team that answers these seven questions clearly saves time for everything that follows, including if it decides, at the end of the conversation, that it is too early to equip itself.

The most common trap

Buying a tool before answering the question of the deadline and the question of the objective. A compliance tool and a steering tool look nothing alike, and the organisation that picks wrong starts again a year later.

A compliance tool is built to produce a report at a given date, in a format expected by a third party. A steering tool is built to track a trajectory over time, and to connect the figure to the actions that move it. Confusing the two families is not a minor mistake: it is the most frequent reason a first carbon accounting project fails or stalls halfway through.

Other frequent mistakes at this stage

• Trying to cover everything from year one, including the hardest Scope 3 items to collect, at the risk of never closing the first exercise.
• Putting the project in the hands of a single person, with no formal mandate or identified backup, which weakens the exercise as soon as that person changes roles.
• Choosing a tool designed for a large enterprise, with a level of configuration complexity disproportionate to the organisation's actual size.
• Waiting for perfect data before starting, when a first, imperfect but documented figure is worth more than no figure at all.

Why annual re-keying does not hold

Traditional carbon accounting is done once a year, often in the first quarter, by reconstructing twelve months of scattered data after the fact. Three consequences follow.

• Missing data is estimated rather than measured, which weakens the result.
• The figure arrives too late to guide a decision: it describes a year that is already over.
• The exercise rests on one or two people, and disappears with them.

Continuous collection settles all three. The data arrives as it goes from the systems that already produce it, energy bills, purchases, travel. That is the principle behind the Kabaun platform: Scopes 1, 2 and 3 fill up without a re-keying campaign, and the reduction trajectory is read in the same place as the actions that carry it.

What continuous data changes day to day

When collection is continuous, the role of the person in charge changes in nature. They no longer spend weeks each quarter chasing invoices and re-typing spreadsheets: they check that the data flows stay connected, and spend the rest of their time interpreting results and proposing actions. This is also what makes the figure credible internally: a result that updates as it goes is easier to defend in front of leadership or a customer than a figure reconstructed once a year, under pressure, from incomplete sources.

This shift toward continuous collection connects to broader work on data reliability and automation, which we also carry out through our automation methods and our data reliability engagements.

Where to start in practice

1. Gather twelve months of energy bills. That is Scope 2, the quickest to obtain.
2. List your ten largest purchasing categories. They carry the bulk of your Scope 3.
3. Identify who, internally, will be responsible for the figure in three years. If nobody answers, the project is not born yet.
4. Only then choose a tool, based on the objective and the deadline.

A checklist before you start

Before starting collection, it is worth checking that a few conditions are in place. This list does not replace the seven questions Klem asks, it complements them on the internal organisation side.

• An identified owner, with the time and the mandate needed to carry the topic over several years, not just for the first campaign.
• Confirmed access to the last twelve months of energy bills, site by site.
• The purchasing ledger, or failing that, the list of the ten largest suppliers by volume.
• A clear answer to the deadline question: is this an external obligation, a request from a customer placing orders, or a voluntary initiative?
• A clear answer to the objective question: produce a report at a given date, or track a reduction trajectory over time?

If one of these conditions is missing, that is not a reason to give up, but it is a signal to address it before choosing a tool.

When an automated approach is worth it

Once the data sources are identified, the next question is how they get connected: should they be re-keyed manually every month, or linked directly to the systems that produce them? For a small structure with few sites and few suppliers, a manually managed collection can be enough in the first year. For a multi-site organisation, with dozens of suppliers and distributed teams, connecting to existing systems quickly becomes essential to keep the promise of continuous collection. This is work we carry out in particular through our full application development methods, when carbon data needs to integrate with business tools already in place rather than living apart in an isolated spreadsheet.

Going further after the first figure

A first carbon footprint assessment is not an end in itself. The figure obtained in the first year mainly serves as a starting point: it helps identify the heaviest items, set realistic action priorities, and prepare the next campaign with collection already partly in place. The organisations that get the most out of their first assessment are the ones that, from the start, think of carbon data as a flow to maintain rather than a one-off report to produce once a year.

This is also the point where many organisations start asking broader questions about the role of artificial intelligence in their approach, whether to make collection more reliable, qualify suppliers, or structure responses to customers placing orders. If that kind of question is coming up for you, our AI diagnostic lays the same groundwork as Klem's seven questions, applied this time to your whole organisation, and our pages on responsible AI and our engagement formats detail how we run this kind of project over time. You can also browse our use cases and projects to see how these principles play out concretely for other organisations.

In short

Carbon accounting is not primarily an IT project. It is an organisational project, which starts with an honest map of the data available, a clear designation of ownership, and a clear-eyed answer to the question of the objective being pursued. The choice of tool, whether a well-managed spreadsheet or a platform like Kabaun, always comes after, not before.

Frequently asked questions

What do Scopes 1, 2 and 3 cover?

Scope 1 covers direct emissions, such as a boiler or company vehicles. Scope 2 covers purchased energy, mainly electricity. Scope 3 covers everything else, upstream and downstream: purchases, freight, travel, use and end of life of the products.

Where do you start a first carbon assessment?

With twelve months of energy bills, which give Scope 2 quickly, then with the ten largest purchasing categories, which carry the bulk of Scope 3. You also need to name the person responsible for the figure over time.

Should you choose a compliance tool or a steering tool?

It depends on the objective and the deadline. A compliance tool produces a report at a given date, a steering tool follows a reduction trajectory. Picking the wrong family often means starting again a year later.

Why prefer continuous collection to annual re-keying?

Because annual re-keying produces an estimated figure, arriving too late to guide a decision, and dependent on one or two people. Continuous collection feeds the Scopes as it goes from the existing systems.