Scope 3 software
Scope 3 covers everything outside your walls: purchased goods, transport, use of sold products, investments. It is usually the largest and messiest part of a footprint, and the reason a generic accounting tool starts to strain.
What Scope 3 software typically does
- Categorises spend or activity into the 15 Scope 3 categories
- Applies spend-based or activity-based emissions factors
- Runs supplier surveys and stores responses
- Handles data quality flags and hybrid methods
- Rolls up to a company total and tracks year on year
What it will not do for you
- Get suppliers to respond
- Decide what level of accuracy you actually need
- Clean up messy procurement categories
- Write the narrative for a disclosure
Signs you need a dedicated tool
- Scope 3 is more than 70% of your footprint and someone is reading the number
- You have hundreds or thousands of suppliers
- You want to move from spend-based to activity-based over time
- You have a science-based target that depends on Scope 3
Not sure if Scope 3 is your bottleneck?
Answer five questions and get a plain recommendation for what type of tool fits.
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