How long does a small company take to prepare its first carbon footprint?

It depends mostly on how easy your records are to find. If twelve months of electricity bills and fuel invoices are in one place, Scope 1 and 2 can be done quickly. Scope 3 takes longer because supplier data has to be collected and checked. Gathering documents is usually the slowest step.

Steps in order

1. Collect twelve months of electricity bills and fuel invoices for each site.
2. Calculate Scope 1 and 2 and check unit conversions.
3. List purchases by spend and pick the largest for Scope 3.
4. Write a short method note and an estimates log.

What speeds it up

• One person owning the folder.
• Discom portal logins for every meter.
• Suppliers who send e-invoices with quantities.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads electricity bills (CEA grid factor 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, CO2 Baseline Database version 21.0) and diesel, LPG and gas invoices (IPCC 2006 defaults) into a dated, fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record for each site, and labels estimates as estimates.

• Inventory for under 12 months
• How long verification takes

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, ISO 14064-1 and 14064-3 (iso.org)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23.