As well as entering information about your electricity usage, waste, fuel, and other direct emissions sources, CarbonTrail can connect to your accounting tool to import your purchased goods and services.

Purchases make up a large proportion of most companies' carbon footprints.

Categorising your expenses in CarbonTrail helps you get the most accurate carbon footprint possible.

The way that CarbonTrail works is by putting your spend into various emissions categories. We use a clever model, developed bys leading sustainability companies, that says "for every dollar spent in category A, the estimated emissions are X".

So it's important to ensure your expenses, especially big ones, are categorised into the correct category. It's easy to choose a category, you can just start typing the gist of the expenditure, for example "new fridge", "car repair", "food for the office", etc, and we'll show you relevant categories.

First, review the purchases found in the expenses page. They are ordered by amount by default, as, generally speaking, larger purchases yield a higher carbon footprint.

Our AI system attempts to categorise your purchases automatically. However, it will never automatically choose a category unless it is over 90% sure. This means that, sometimes, expenses will be uncategorised. You will need to choose a category for these manually.

CarbonTrail has over 500 categories of emissions to choose from, which is a lot. Choosing the correct category for your expenses can feel a little daunting, so we've written a simple guide here to help you understand.

Our emission factors are aligned to industry classifications, or BIC codes here in Australia and New Zealand. You might have used these classifications when incorporating your company.

The best way to consider what CarbonTrail needs is "what category best refers to the type of business that sold me the good or service?"

Here are some examples of expenses, and the correct category code. If you are not sure, please reach out to our friendly team, and we'll help you.

Sometimes, transactions don't make any difference to your emissions position. These commonly include things like tax, donations, internal stock movement, etc.

To ignore a transaction, you can click Set Category... then choose "Ignore Transaction". Enter a reason for why the transaction was ignored, then click Confirm.

We often get asked about how to treat items that are "zero carbon" or offsets from flights. As long as you are consistent in a given reporting period, you can either ignore these transactions, or keep them in the inventory. It is useful to enter a meaningful reason when ignoring given transactions so that you can review this later. Also, if you choose to get your reporting period audited this will be important.

We can also use the categories to suggest which expenses can be improved with activity data directly from your bills and invoices. Click the button below to learn more!

Learn more about Emission Compass here.