Sustainability Management

Sustainability management and emissions tracking in Business Central.

Business Central offers a sustainability management feature that allows you to monitor and manage your organization and its impact on the environment. This feature is used to monitor and regulate an organization’s ecological footprint by tracking various greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

In this way, correct insights are obtained. The function supports the basic process of capturing emission data via sustainability journals or purchase documents as well as recalculating emissions into CO2 equivalents.

You can either enter known data manually or use integrated methods to calculate the emissions footprint. Calculation using formulas is only available when you use sustainability journals.

Standard functions - BC 24/25 status

The first version of this feature focuses on greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standard defines three emission scopes:

  • Scope 1 emissions: include emissions resulting from stationary and mobile combustion as well as unintended fugitive emissions.
  • Scope 2 emissions include indirect emissions from the generation of energy obtained from utility companies.
  • Scope 3 emissions include a broad range of emissions, from purchased goods and services and capital goods, through fuel- and energy-related activities, upstream and downstream transport, to generated waste, business travel, and employee commuting, etc.

With this feature, you can do the following:

  • Set up emission factors for various sources and categories of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Capture emission data in sustainability entries, either manually or using predefined calculation methods.
  • Capture emission data directly with purchase documents.
  • Capture the purchase of emission certificates using purchase documents.
  • Calculate the internal CO2 fee.
  • Recalculate the emissions of all gases into CO2 equivalents using formulas.
  • Post emission entries (and emission certificates) in the sustainability journal, where you can display and analyze the emission data by different dimensions.
  • Define scorecards and goals and compare them with baseline and target values.
  • Create sustainability reports that show your organization’s greenhouse gas emission performance.
  • Use cross-functional reporting in financial reports.