Carbon Footprint Estimates

Many businesses want a better grip on their carbon emissions as the data is used for reporting and tracking efforts to reduce emissions. However, they don't want to bury their employees in paperwork and extra processes. Since employees are already registering their travels and purchases in Skovik, we've decided to build CO₂ tracking directly into our product. With no extra effort, Skovik will map out the collective CO₂ emissions from all employee travel and purchases (configurable per category).

CO₂ emissions in different sectors

For companies in the service sector, such as consulting, insurance, finance and technology, employee travel constitutes the lion’s share of the emissions. For a typical service company, 80% of all CO₂ emissions stem from employee mobility (flights, taxis, etc.), and the remaining 20% is from office heating, data centers, etc. By activating the Carbon Footprint feature, you will get a comprehensive overview of your carbon footprint by looking only at employee travel. If you add a few easy-to-estimate items, such as electricity, you will have a good grip on the company’s total carbon footprint.

As a manufacturing company, CO₂ emissions from employee travel are still essential to the overall footprint. But you’ll need to complement it with an analysis of the value chain (raw materials, transportation, distribution). That said, an excellent first step is often to map out the footprint from employee travel and expenses.

Overview

The carbon footprint feature is divided into a basic and advanced carbon footprint model. In short, the basic model consists of automatic calculations for taxi trips, mileages and per diems. This feature can be activated with little to no configuration. There is also the option to activate the advanced carbon footprint feature, where you may make CO₂ calculations on all expenses, mileages and per diems. This feature will need more configuration, but you can ensure that your CO₂ tracking aligns with your company's ESG reporting.

The estimated CO₂ emission for every report will be displayed in the accounting journal.

Once a report has been approved, you can export the carbon footprint file, which will summarise all the period's expenses, and you can easily transform the data if needed.

Basic carbon footprint

The basic feature can be activated with little to no configuration and contains estimations for taxi receipts, mileages and per diems.

Taxi receipts

For Skovik to calculate the CO₂ emission on taxi receipts, there has to be a separate expense category for taxi expenses. If so, Skovik will automatically calculate the CO₂ emission when an employee enters a taxi expense. This CO₂ emission is based on the average distance a taxi driver takes you per currency unit and the average CO₂ emission for a typical car.

Mileages

Since the employee already has to enter their driving distance in Skovik to calculate the correct mileage reimbursement, the same driving distance is used to calculate the CO₂ emission. It is also possible to add a field where the employee chooses if they have driven an electric car, as the emission of an electric car differs from a traditional one.

Per diems

When entering per diems, employees must enter the cities they have traveled to. It is not sufficient to enter countries traveled to.

When activating the feature, the employee must fill in their mode of transportation in addition to the standard information. This way, Skovik can consider the transportation mode when calculating the CO₂ emissions.

The per diem feature is only available in some countries. If you have questions regarding this, contact [e-mail].

Advanced carbon footprint

Skovik support can activate the advanced feature, but it will require configurations as you must assign your own estimated CO₂ emissions on specific expense categories. You must also consider that some trips might be registered as a per diem and a receipt; thus, you must ensure that you do not count the same trip twice. When activating the advanced feature, all components from the basic feature will automatically be activated. However, you may turn them off if needed.

When calculating the CO₂ emission on an expense category, you may choose if you want the CO₂ emission to be calculated per currency unit or expense. These settings can be made within Settings --> Carbon footprint.

CO₂ per expense vs. CO₂ per currency unit

When choosing whether to estimate the CO₂ per currency unit or expense, you must consider if the CO₂ emission is a function of the cost or not. For example, a taxi trip's price mainly correlates to the driving distance. A trip that is 100 kilometers will be more expensive than a trip that is 10 kilometers, implying that it is possible to estimate a general CO₂ emission per currency unit.

However, when looking at train tickets, the price is more often based on demand. Suppose everyone wants to travel home during Christmas. In that case, the train tickets will increase in price, and popular destinations will be more expensive (disregarding of whether they are near or far away). In this case, estimating a general CO₂ emission per expense might make more sense. No matter the train ticket's price, the estimated CO₂ emission will always be the same.

Activate carbon footprint estimates

To activate the feature, please get in touch with [e-mail] or your Customer Success representative.

When activating the feature, you must decide whether you want to activate the basic or the advanced carbon footprint feature. If you are going to activate the advanced feature, you also need to decide on what type of expenses, mileages and per diems you want to calculate the CO₂ emission for.

If you are uncertain about anything, Skovik support can answer all of your questions and discuss your options with you.