Emissions measurement and reporting, made simple.

All carbon footprints are, by their nature, an estimate. Some are more accurate than others. We have designed our service to use the latest emissions factors, derived from reputable, New Zealand-based sources.

We offer what is known as a hybrid carbon accounting service, which mixes data from your accounting tool with more accurate information from flight data, electricity bills, waste invoices, etc.

You can choose whether you add this additional “activity” data, but we recommend you do so for accuracy. Once we have this data, we combine it with your spend information for the most accurate picture possible.

Our tool has been audited for alignment to the ISO14064-1 and GHG Protocol standards by McHugh and Shaw, a respected greenhouse gas standards auditor based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Our audit results are available on request.

Portions of the CarbonTrail tool use AI to deliver a better user experience. There are three key areas where this occurs:

• Automatic transaction + invoice categorisation - our tool predicts the most appropriate emissions category for a given record, from over 200 emissions categories. If the AI model is not over 90% confident in a prediction, it will be added to a list for your review.
• Invoice/Bill data extraction - we use vision AI to review your documents/invoices/bills and extract key data, for example, kilowatt hours from an energy invoice, or distance travelled for a flight.
• Initiative Generation - we use generative AI to generate reduction initiatives for your business, based on your emissions inventory.

In all cases, we use our own models, hosted in our own AWS cloud account, and your data never leaves our secure environment.

As stated in our Terms and Conditions, we may use anonymised transactional data to improve our data categorisation model. You may opt out of this process by emailing hello@carbontrail.co, and we will ensure your data is not used for model training moving forward.

You can either connect Xero accounts or upload data via CSV and file uploads. For those of you who aren’t using Xero, you can download your data using a simple template and upload additional information as required.

Below are the featues supported with each tool:

Xero

• Sign in with Xero
• Automatic Expense Upload Categorisation
• Automatic Invoice/Bill Sync
• Automatic Invoice/Bill data extraction

CSV Upload

• Manual Expense Upload
• Automatic Expense Categorisation
• Manual Invoice/Bill Sync
• Automatic Invoice/Bill data extraction

If you have any questions about whether your tool or system is supported, please email hello@carbontrail.co to discuss.

CarbonTrail helps you produce an emissions measurement based on the information you provide us. We make every effort to be as accurate as possible, but we don’t audit the results of every inventory. Therefore, by default, it is not the same as engaging an external entity, such as Toitū or EKOS, to perform a measurement and verification of your numbers.

What we can do is supply data to those programmes to help you get verified, but that is a premium feature, which you need to pay for.

In New Zealand, the Commerce Commission has strict guidelines about what you can say regarding your sustainability position. These guidelines help you avoid greenwashing and legal issues regarding your claims.

So, it’s really important that you don’t make claims such as being carbon neutral, net zero, or otherwise without getting your results verified by a certified verification body. Again, we can help you do this, but it’s not available without an additional conversation between you and CarbonTrail.

We accept no liability for any claim made by you through your use of our service, in line with clause 5.1b in our Terms and Conditions.

What you can say, however, is that you are measuring your impact and taking action.

If you have not yet completed a measurement, you can simply let your sponsor know, and they will allocate your licence to someone else.

If you have already completed a measurement, please email hello@carbontrail.co with the subject “Opt Out” and we will work with your sponsor to remove data in line with their data protection policies. Please note that you will need to pay for CarbonTrail if you want to use the tool, when you opt out after having completed a measurement. We will discuss this with you during the process.

Your sponsor can only access information about your emissions. At no time can your sponsor access any information about your revenue, financials, bank details, invoices, or any other financial information that you have shared with us.

The information made available to your sponsor is as follows:

• The status of your measurement:
  • Whether you have opened the email, or opted out of measurement
  • The progress you have made
• A CarbonTrail-generated rating of the quality of the data you’ve provided.
• Premises address, the type of activity at that premises
• Scope 1 Emissions Estimate
• Scope 2 Emissions Estimate
• Scope 3 Emissions Estimate
  • This measurement is broken down into the categories as specified by the GHG Protocol.
• Top supplier information, where more than one supplier is common to others in your cohort
• Whether the measurement has been verified or not.

We recognise that this data is incredibly sensitive, and we go beyond the industry best practice to ensure that it is held and processed safely.

We have aligned our operations with the global ISO27001 information security standard, host our services in Amazon Web Services, in line with best practices, and have at least annual external audits of our environmental and security processes to ensure that we exceed the minimum requirements set by the industry. You can request to view our security controls through our Trust Center.

We have an established Terms of Use and Privacy Policy that describe exactly how your data is used and the process for removing it once the measurement is complete, if you decide you no longer wish to use our services.

CarbonTrail is a well-established and trusted carbon measurement organisation, having been in operation since 2022, and having gained a 4.8/5 star rating on the Xero app store.

If you have any questions about data security, please direct them to hello@carbontrail.co, and we’d be happy to chat.