Sage Earth Carbon Accounting can simplify your greenhouse gas emissions tracking. Our platform automates the calculation of emissions for businesses by integrating financial, operational, and activity-based data. Using an emissions intensity factor database and aligning with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Sage Earth Carbon Accounting categorises emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, ensuring accurate calculations. Whether you prefer automated or manual data inputs, Sage Earth is designed to fit your business's unique needs and circumstances.

Sage Earth Carbon Accounting currently supports emissions calculations for UK-based businesses, focusing on those with the majority of buying and selling conducted within the UK.

Sage Earth Carbon Accounting pulls transactional data, such as bank payments and paid invoices, from your financial accounting solution. This spend data is used to estimate emissions by applying relevant emissions intensity factors (EIFs).

Find out more: What data is used from my accountancy package?

Confirming automated spend categorisation in Sage Earth Carbon Accounting is essential to ensure the accuracy of your carbon footprint estimation. The system uses advanced AI matching functionality to assign categories to each transaction based on spend data. However automated categorisation may not always be perfect, and manual confirmation helps refine these assignments, ensuring that each transaction is accurately categorised according to its specific nature. The categorisation matching potential will improve with more usage.

We only support data from 2022 because some of the datasets used in our carbon measurement methodology aren’t available before then. Older data also tends to be less relevant in carbon measurement. Your recent operations provide a more accurate picture of your current carbon footprint.

Your financial year start date is set during company setup and isn’t imported from your accounting platform. Once saved, it can’t be changed. If it was entered incorrectly, you’ll need to reset your account and start again - so it’s important to enter the correct date from the beginning.

Currently, Sage Carbon Earth Accounting only supports a standard 12-month financial year.

For businesses connecting their accounting software, you will need access to your financial accounts at an administrator level to synchronise your data. You will also require knowledge of what each line of spend relates to within your financial accounts to confirm the categorisation process.

If you have actual consumption figures for things like energy, fuel, waste and water, this will help you create a more accurate and compliant footprint.

Full information will be given as you go through the help guides for each part of the program.

Find out more: Getting Started with Sage Earth Carbon Accounting

During the setup process, Sage Earth Carbon Accounting asks for your industry and division, which it uses to assign a SIC (Standard Industrial Categorisation) code. This determines your industry and inform your carbon footprint.
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We use a condensed version of the UK Office for National Statistics' SIC codes. While the full list includes detailed subcategories (e.g. “growing of rice”), Sage Earth Carbon Accounting uses a middle-level grouping of Industry Division (e.g. 'Farming and hunting') - more specific than the Industry as described by SIC code (e.g. Agriculture), but not as granular as individual activities.

If your business doesn’t have a SIC code or has more than one, select the code that best represents your primary activities. This helps align your business with the most relevant industry emissions factors. A full searchable list of the SIC codes Sage Earth Carbon Accounting uses can be found here.

Sage Earth Carbon Accounting collects business information such as business name, location, sector, and revenue. It also collects company data including financial, operational, and activity-based data. This information is processed to automate greenhouse gas emissions calculations, ensuring accurate and context-specific emissions estimates.

As a Sage Group entity, Sage Earth Carbon Accounting adheres to Sage's Privacy Notice  and observes all UK GDPR laws as set out by the UK Data Protection Act  2018. 

Find out more: Sage Earth Carbon Accounting's Terms of Service

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Yes, Sage Earth Carbon Accounting allows you to set up multiple user logins for your business, enabling manual data entry by different users and facilitating a comprehensive and accurate carbon footprint for the entire business.

Sage Earth Carbon Accounting offers multiple user types, each with specific permissions to ensure effective management and control:

Yes, Administrators can configure user roles and permissions to hide sensitive financial data from certain users. Only users with the ‘Can view spend’ permission can see the values of financial spends. We generally recommend ensuring at least one Administrator has this permission.
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Find out more:
​Manage users
​Add an additional user

The platform provides a dashboard view of your business's footprint, broken down by 'scopes' (as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol). Reporting is a key roadmap item, so keep an eye out for updates about this feature. 

Find out more:

How to share your carbon footprint

The Sage Earth Carbon Accounting methodology focuses solely on measuring actual greenhouse gas emissions within the defined organisational and operational boundaries. Carbon credits or similar market-based instruments are excluded from these calculations to prioritise genuine emissions reductions over offsetting mechanisms.

Find out more:
​The Sage Earth Carbon Accounting methodology

We're always looking for ways to improve our users' experience, please contact us to let us know what features you would like to see. Our product team regularly reviews all customer feature requests, and where fitting, suggestions are added to our product roadmap for future development. ​ 

Through Sage's Net Zero Hub, and our Sage University courses, we offer support and learning resources to guide businesses right through their carbon reduction journey. You can also head to Sage Advice for sustainability-focused advice for businesses. We're continuing to build our library of resources as the Sage Earth Carbon Accounting platform grows.  

Please contact our support team and we will be happy to help.