Frequently Asked Questions

Most small businesses complete the full wizard in 5 to 10 minutes. We collect 13 core data points across 5 steps: company info, energy, waste, supply chain, and certifications. You can also upload an electricity bill — our AI fills in the data automatically.

Usually, yes. The wizard itself takes 5 to 10 minutes once you have your electricity bill in hand — the AI parser reads it for you. Most of a two-week window goes to gathering headcount, waste figures, and vehicle-fuel data beforehand, not to filling in the tool. Start the wizard early even with partial data — you can save and resume any time, and a partial Passport in your dashboard beats nothing.

It depends what they ask for. Most buyers accept your public profile link (e.g. ecodiligence.com/profile/your-company) — they can read it on any device, no PDF download required. If they want a file, send the branded PDF (one click from your dashboard). If they explicitly need machine-readable data — common for larger banks and EU procurement — send the VSME Digital Template (Excel) on Pro, or run it through the EFRAG validator to produce XBRL. If you're unsure which to send, the public link is always a safe first reply.

Have these to hand: (1) your most recent annual electricity bill (the AI bill parser reads it for you); (2) approximate annual fuel use if you have a vehicle fleet or on-site combustion; (3) headcount split by gender; (4) waste volumes in kg or tonnes if you track them. That's enough for the standard wizard. You can save and resume any time — partial Passports stay in your dashboard.

No — though many small businesses work with a consultant who creates Passports on their behalf. EcoDiligence is self-service: the wizard guides you through each question with examples, plausibility checks, and AI-powered bill parsing. If you have your annual electricity bill and basic operational data, you have everything you need to do it yourself.

You can set up a supplier network, invite suppliers individually or by CSV, and each one receives an invitation email and a guided flow carrying your logo and colour. Automatic reminders go to anyone who hasn't responded. Every invitation carries a status, so you can see who has started and who has finished, and you can export the whole supplier list and its data as CSV. The dashboard shows network averages for emissions, renewable and recycling share, plus top emitters, certification coverage and response funnel. Advanced network analytics, team-member management with roles, SSO/SAML, bulk aggregated exports and API access are on the roadmap and not available yet.

Each attested Passport in your network shows a freshness status — Current, Update due, or Out of date — based on when the supplier last confirmed their data (the 'Last confirmed' date on their row), not when a record was last touched by a background process. Suppliers who haven't published yet show 'No Passport yet'. You can filter the table by Current or by Needs update, which covers both Update due and Out of date. Freshness tells you which records are worth chasing or reviewing before you use them; it is a measure of how recently the supplier re-confirmed their own figures, not an assessment of whether those figures are accurate — all data on EcoDiligence is self-reported and not independently audited.

Yes. The Free tier gives you 1 ESG Passport with PDF export, a shareable profile page, QR code, and annual updates — at no cost, forever. The Pro tier ($299/year) adds the VSME Digital Template (Excel) — the EFRAG-validated path to XBRL — plus unlimited AI bill parsing, custom slug, and priority support.

EcoDiligence aligns every data point with: EFRAG VSME (Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs), IFRS ISSB S2 (Climate-related Disclosures), California SB 253/261, Japan SSBJ, India BRSR, EU CSDDD value chain requirements, and Singapore SGX climate disclosure rules.

No. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is product/market law, not an ESG reporting standard — your ESG Passport doesn't replace a Declaration of Conformity or legal conformity assessment. It structures waste, recycling, and circularity disclosure (aligned with VSME's B7 theme) that buyers may ask for. See our PPWR overview for the full picture.

ESG Passports are self-reported. EcoDiligence is not an audit firm and does not provide assurance. We run plausibility checks during data entry (flagging values outside typical industry ranges) and show clear data-quality indicators on your profile. Buyers, banks, or regulators that require third-party assurance can use your VSME Digital Template (Excel) export with an external auditor — that's the document built for the assurance workflow.

Not quite — and the difference matters before you reply to a buyer. An ESG Passport is structured, self-reported data (not independently audited) — your Scope 1 and 2 figures, policies, and any certifications you already hold — mapped to standards like VSME and ISSB S2. EcoDiligence doesn't issue a certificate and isn't a certification body. If your buyer specifically needs a formal certification (like ISO 14001) or an audited figure, that's a separate process with an external body — your Passport just gets the underlying numbers ready faster, for that process or any other request.

A traditional sustainability report is a 30-100 page document, often requiring weeks of consultancy. An ESG Passport is a structured, standards-aligned data profile — a permanent URL plus downloadable PDF/Excel/XBRL — designed specifically for procurement workflows and supply-chain data requests.

You do. Your data, your ESG Passport. EcoDiligence stores your data securely (encrypted at rest, EU-hosted Supabase infrastructure) and never sells it. You can delete your profile at any time. Public profile pages are only created when you explicitly publish them.

When you upload a bill to our AI parser, it's sent to our AI provider (Anthropic Claude) for one-time extraction and is not stored on our servers afterward. The extracted values are saved to your profile only after you review and confirm them.

Yes. Our practices are GDPR-aligned for European users (data minimization, explicit consent, right to deletion, data portability). See our Privacy Policy for full details.

We recommend annual updates to reflect your most recent reporting year. Your passport URL stays the same — only the data refreshes. Procurement teams want to see active, up-to-date profiles.

Upload a photo or PDF of your electricity bill in any language. Our system uses Anthropic's Claude Vision API to extract the kWh consumed, billing period, and supplier. You review the extracted values before they are saved — nothing is committed automatically. The bill itself is not stored on our servers after parsing.

Yes. Every ESG Passport can be exported as PDF. Pro adds machine-readable Quick XBRL (informal, schema-only) and the EFRAG VSME Digital Template (the Excel file EU auditors and the EFRAG validator both expect). All exports are generated from the same source of truth and stay in sync.

We currently maintain emission factors for over 200 countries using IEA 2024 grid data and DEFRA fuel factors. If you operate somewhere we don't yet cover, your Scope 2 will fall back to a global average factor and a data-quality warning will appear on your profile. Email us and we'll prioritize adding your region.

Advanced Disclosures are an optional Pro-only layer on top of the standard ESG Passport. They cover selected topics from the VSME Comprehensive Module (environmental impacts, actions, targets, risks, opportunities, governance, and emissions action plans) and IFRS S2 transition-readiness questions (GHG targets, climate strategy, financial impact). Add them when larger clients, banks, or investors request deeper information than the basic Passport provides. The standard sections are always sufficient for most procurement workflows — Advanced is for when the questions get harder.

No. The VSME Comprehensive Add-on is a curated subset of EFRAG VSME Comprehensive Module topics — 8 questions structured for procurement and investor due-diligence workflows, paired with 7 IFRS S2 transition-readiness questions (the ISSB Transition Readiness layer). A full VSME Comprehensive Module submission, or a formal ISSB Transition Plan, is a much larger disclosure typically prepared with consultancy support and external assurance. Our Add-on gives you a structured, machine-readable starting point that buyers can read at a glance; it does not replace a full module submission.

Your answers stay safely in our database — nothing is deleted. They simply stop appearing on your public Passport, PDF, and machine-readable exports while you're on the Free plan. The Passport page silently omits them; your dashboard shows a notice confirming the data is preserved. Re-upgrade to Pro any time and the disclosures reappear instantly with no data re-entry.

Yes. When you select Australia as your country of operation, EcoDiligence applies the Australian Smart Pack — Scope 2 calculations use the DCCEEW National Greenhouse Accounts Factors 2025 (national average by default, with optional state-level factors), and your Passport surfaces the ASRS Aligned and NGER Disclosure Support badges. The ISSB Transition Readiness Advanced Disclosures module is extended for Australian users with four additional questions covering climate governance, risk-identification process, scenario analysis, and value-chain engagement — the four areas AASB S2 (the Australian adoption of IFRS S2) asks about most explicitly. The result is a structured response that maps to ASRS without you having to learn the standard yourself. Note that EcoDiligence is structured for ASRS disclosure and does not constitute a certified or assured ASRS filing — formal compliance is your auditor's role.

Australian electricity grid factors vary by state — from around 0.20 kgCO₂e/kWh in hydro-heavy Tasmania to 0.78 kgCO₂e/kWh in Victoria, almost a four-fold spread. Selecting your state gives a materially more accurate Scope 2 number than the national average. Other Smart Pack countries either publish a single national factor (Germany, the UK, Israel) or have less variance across regions, so a state selector wouldn't change much. We will surface state-level factors for other federations (e.g. US, India, Brazil) when the accuracy gain justifies the extra UI step. If you operate in Australia and leave the dropdown blank, the national average is used and your Passport notes that explicitly in the methodology section.

Quick XBRL is informal — it's the schema-shaped XBRL you'd use for internal tooling, dashboards, or quick interoperability checks. It is not a validated EFRAG submission. For a filing that passes the EFRAG validator, use the VSME Digital Template (Excel) export and run it through EFRAG's official validator at xbrl.efrag.org/convert/. EcoDiligence pre-fills the Excel template with your Passport data — you don't have to re-key anything.

Yes. Your ESG Passport lives at a permanent URL (e.g. ecodiligence.com/profile/your-company). You can share this link with as many buyers, auditors, or partners as you like. Each visit is anonymous — we don't tell you who looked at it, and we don't show your visitors who else has viewed the profile.

Custom slugs are available on the Pro tier. Free profiles use an auto-generated slug based on your company name. Once you upgrade, you can claim a custom slug (subject to availability and our naming guidelines) from your dashboard.

Yes. Pro includes unlimited ESG Passports under a single account, which makes it the natural fit for sustainability consultants and advisors managing several small business clients. You create Passports on behalf of the small businesses you advise, share them by link, and update them annually. Each client's Passport gets its own clean public URL — your client can hand the link to their buyers directly. There's no dedicated 'consultant mode' yet, but the Pro plan covers the workflow today. If you advise more than ~25 small businesses and want bulk-import or advisor-branded features, contact us at hello@ecodiligence.com — we're building toward that.

Currently, when you create a Passport for a client using your Pro account, you retain full editing control. Your client receives a public link to view and share the Passport with their buyers. This model gives you maximum quality control. We are planning client co-management features (so your client can update basic data independently) — if this is important for your workflow, please let us know.

Free includes 1 ESG Passport with PDF export, shareable profile, QR code, and annual updates — at no cost, forever. Pro ($299/year) adds: unlimited Passports (the natural fit for consultants managing several small business clients); the VSME Digital Template (Excel) — the EFRAG-validated path to XBRL; unlimited AI bill parsing; a custom URL slug; optional Advanced Disclosures (VSME Comprehensive Add-on + ISSB Transition Readiness); and priority email support.

Yes. Pro is billed annually. You can cancel from your dashboard at any time and you will keep Pro features until the end of the billing period. Your profile data remains accessible — you simply revert to the Free tier at renewal.

We don't offer time-limited trials. Instead, the Free tier is genuinely free forever — start there, see if the platform fits your needs, and upgrade only when you need Pro-only features like XBRL or the Excel template.

Email hello@ecodiligence.com for general questions. Pro customers receive priority support with a 1-business-day response target. For accessibility issues, email accessibility@ecodiligence.com. For privacy-related requests, email privacy@ecodiligence.com.

EcoDiligence runs on Supabase (PostgreSQL, EU region) for data storage and Vercel for application hosting. All data is encrypted at rest and in transit. We use Clerk for authentication and Resend for transactional email. See our Privacy Policy for the full list of subprocessors.