How to map your accounting data

In this guide:

• What do you mean by mapping our accounting data?
• How do I map my accounting data?
• Should I map by account or supplier?
• Can I exclude any of my spend?
• Watch our step by step mapping tutorial!

What do you mean by mapping our accounting data?

Good question! This simply means categorising your spend based on what the service or good is. Each of these categories has a different emissions factor (a weight of CO2 that is attributed to $1 spent in this category), that determines how many emissions are coming from this spend.

How do I map my accounting data?

Once you've integrated your accounting data, our internal mapping engine will select emissions categories for any suppliers we know. You can then work through a list of all our suppliers until you have selected an emissions category for each of them.

Simply move down the list of accounts on your left. For each supplier open the drop down menu and either scroll through our list of categories or start typing what type of supplier it is. For example, if it's a somewhere you stayed for work travel just type 'hotel' and select the appropriate category.

You can use the multi-select function to map multiple accounts to the same category in less clicks. To do this, select the checkbox on the left hand side of the supplier name on all of the other suppliers that match the same category. Once you have all the relevant suppliers selected, select the drop down, search for the appropriate emissions factor and select it to map all of them at once! Now you can move onto your next emissions category until you have mapped all of the suppliers in this account.

Should I map by account or supplier?

We recommend mapping by supplier, to ensure you get a more accurate footprint. The more specific you can be with your spend mapping, the more comprehensive your emissions assessment will be, and the more targeted you can be with your reduction strategies. However, you can map by account if you prefer.

Can I exclude any of my spend?

There will be some spend items that you need to exclude at this point of your data collection. Within our categories, we have 4 reasons to exclude your spend: 

1. Activity data used: you will use this category to exclude any spend from the mapping screen when you have included this elsewhere during your data collection. This will most commonly be used to exclude electricity bills, rent, fuel spend, and travel data when you have more granular activity information
2. Out of scope: this will be used to exclude spend that falls outside of the emissions boundary of your assessment or costs that are eventually owned by the customer rather than yourself. Your use of this exclusion will depend on your boundary so if you’re not sure what this means - please get in touch with us!
3. Contractors - included in staff headcount:  in some cases, you might have members of your staff who show up in your accounting spend. If you’ve included them in your FTE count, you will use this category to exclude this from your PG&S calculation. 
4. Relevance test: this exclusion is used for supplier spend outside of the mandatory categories that are also deemed irrrelevant. You’ll use this exclusion when the supplier/account does not meet the following criteria:some text
   • Supplier categories that are greater than or equal to 5% of total expenditure
   • Single suppliers that are greater than or equal to 1% of total expenditure 
   • OR at least 2 of the following criteria are not met: some text
     • the emissions from the source are likely to be large relative to the organisation’s electricity, stationary energy and fuel emissions
     • the emissions from the source contribute to the organisation’s greenhouse gas risk exposure
     • the emissions from the source are deemed relevant by key Company stakeholders
     • the responsible organisation could influence emissions reduction from the source
     • the emissions are from outsourced activities previously undertaken within the organisation’s boundary, or from outsourced activities typically undertaken in-house by comparable Companies.

Watch our step by step mapping tutorial!

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