We report April to March. Which year does SBTi use to judge our target?
The calendar year that holds most of your months. April 2024 to March 2025 has nine months in 2024, so SBTi assesses it as 2024. A year split six and six, ending 30 June, takes the later year. The rule sits in the footnotes to C15 and C18 of the Corporate Near-Term Criteria V5.3.1.
Why the label matters
SBTi checks a target against a pathway that sets how deep the cut must be in each year. If your base year and target year are labelled one year off, the minimum cut it expects shifts too. The footnotes say the majority-month rule applies to all targets, Scope 1, 2 and 3.
How your financial years are read
- FY 2019-20 (April 2019 to March 2020): nine months in 2019, assessed as 2019.
- FY 2024-25 (April 2024 to March 2025): assessed as 2024.
- FY 2029-30 (April 2029 to March 2030): assessed as 2029, not 2030.
- FY 2030-31 (April 2030 to March 2031): assessed as 2030.
- A July to June year ending 30 June 2025: split evenly, so the later year, 2025.
The 2030 trap
SBTi recommends a 2030 target year for near-term targets (R7), which also exempts you from the 5 to 10 year window. Many Indian companies write "by FY 2030" and mean FY 2029-30. On the majority-month reading, that year is assessed as 2029, a year earlier than you intended. If you want 2030, the matching financial year is FY 2030-31. Confirm the label with SBTi Services before you submit.
What to put in the submission
- Write every year as the financial year with its dates, for example FY 2024-25 (April 2024 to March 2025).
- Keep all twelve months of bills and invoices for the base year and the most recent year under the same April to March cut.
- Do not reshuffle months into a calendar year to make the label tidy. Use one reporting year end throughout.
Counting the months for a target from FY 2019-20 to FY 2029-30
- Base year FY 2019-20: April to December 2019 is 9 months, January to March 2020 is 3 months, so 2019
- Target year FY 2029-30: 9 months in 2029, 3 in 2030, so 2029
- Span checked by SBTi: 2019 to 2029, ten pathway years
- To land on 2030 instead, the target year would be FY 2030-31
Example company. The footnote fixes the year label; the cut itself comes from the SBTi method you use.
What Senseible does here
Senseible files every bill and fuel invoice under its billing period and adds emissions up by April to March financial year, so each month is visible when you count. It does not set, submit or validate SBTi targets; SBTi Services validates them.
- SBTi near-term target years and base year
- Which inventory year SBTi wants in 2026
- What 42% by 2030 means
- Scope 3 supplier evidence
Last reviewed 2026-11-01. SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 applies from 1 February 2027; check whether the same majority-month rule carries over to its near-term targets.