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Step-by-Step: Format Capital Goods Data

How to upload your capital goods data.

Clare avatar
Written by Clare
Updated over 9 months ago

Capital goods are the durable products used by your company to produce other goods and services. These include machinery, equipment, and buildings. Capital good emissions include all the upstream (i.e., cradle-to-gate) emissions from the production of capital goods purchased or acquired by your organisation.

We calculate capital good emissions by using spend-based data.

  • Spend-based method uses the gross spend amount per capital good in the selected currency and a capital good category. (Recommended)

  • Bring Your Own Emissions allows you to upload your own pre-calculated emissions to the Plan A platform. For more information, see here.

Check out our step-by-step guides to formatting data for all calculation methods.

Step-by-Step: Format Spend-Based Data

There are several ways to enter your data. Regardless of which method you choose, you must include all required information to ensure accurate emissions calculations. Below, we’ve listed the key data points you need to include.

Format: Your data needs to be uploaded as a CSV or Excel file.

Column A: start_date

  • The first day of your data period.

  • The suggested date format is YYYY-MM-DD, but check the Accepted Formats article to see a full list of formats you can use.

  • This field is mandatory.

Column B: end_date

  • The last day of your data period.

  • The suggested date format is YYYY-MM-DD, but check the Accepted Formats article to see a full list of formats you can use.

  • It can be the same as the start date if you are entering data for just one day.

  • This field is mandatory.

Column C: location

  • The ISO-3166 alpha-2 code of the country where the emissions occurred (e.g., DE).

  • This field is mandatory.

Column D: facility_name

  • The facility that the respective emissions should be allocated to.

  • Make sure to apply exactly the same names you set in ‘Organisational Data’.

Column E: value

  • The gross spend amount in the selected currency and for the selected capital good category.

  • Numbers should be formatted using numeric values only and using a dot as the decimal separator (e.g. 25634.20).

  • This field is mandatory.

In your spend data, you may notice some negative figures, reflecting refunds. These should still be included in your data upload so that previously reported emissions relating to refunded goods can be deducted from your carbon balance accordingly. Negative spend data will be reflected as negative emissions values in the month the refund was given.

Column F: value.currency

Column G: plana_category

  • The Plan A category that your capital good falls under. For an overview of all categories, visit the Help Centre article: Plan A Categories for Capital Goods.

  • This field is mandatory.

Column H: supplier_name

  • Enter your supplier name here to be able to aggregate your capital goods emissions by supplier.

  • This is an optional but recommended field.

Column I: product_category

  • You can add internal category names (and subcategories if applicable) to your data if you wish to use it for reporting and analysis purposes.

  • This is an optional but recommended field.

Optional tags

  • As always, you can add optional columns for company specific tags.

  • Learn more about how tags work: Tag Your Data.

Step-by-Step: Format BYOE Data

There are several ways to enter your data. Regardless of which method you choose, you must include all required information to ensure accurate emissions calculations. Below, we’ve listed the key data points you need to include.

Column A: start_date

  • The first day of your data period.

  • The suggested date format is YYYY-MM-DD, but check the Accepted Formats article to see a full list of formats you can use.

  • This field is mandatory.

Column B: end_date

  • The last day of your data period. It can be the same as the start date if you are entering data for just one day.

  • The suggested date format is YYYY-MM-DD, but check the Accepted Formats article to see a full list of formats you can use.

  • This field is mandatory.

Column C: location

  • The ISO-3166 alpha-2 code of the country where the emissions occurred (e.g., DE).

  • This field is mandatory.

Column D: facility_name

  • The facility that the respective emissions should be allocated to.

  • Make sure to apply exactly the same names you set here to all the other templates asking for a "facility_name" input.

Column E: value

  • Your own emissions in kg CO₂e.

  • Numbers should be formatted using numeric values only and using a dot as the decimal separator (e.g. 25634.20).

  • This field is mandatory.

Column F: plana_category

Optional tags

  • As always, you can add optional columns for company specific tags.

  • Learn more about how tags work: Tag Your Data.

Reminder: It is not Plan A’s responsibility to ensure the calculation of those 3rd parties are in accordance with the GHG Protocol. There is no verification or validation of BOYE emissions through Plan A.


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