A first report, step by step

4 min read · Updated September 23, 2026

A first report is a six-step project. The order is not decorative: each step is the condition for the next, and skipping one stops you only at the end, when fixing it costs more.

1. Draw the boundary

Which legal entities and which sites are in the report. A single-company business is done in five minutes; a group has to decide whether it reports individually or consolidated, and by which method.

2. Open the period

The reporting year, its first and last day, and the base year later reductions are measured against. The period also fixes the set of emission factors the calculation will use.

3. Collect the data

Invoices, meters, service reports — one row per source and month. Mark whatever is an estimate as an estimate straight away; nobody can reconstruct that later.

4. Attach the evidence

Every row needs its source: an invoice, a reading, a report. Evidence is not bureaucracy — it is the only thing that separates a report from a wish list when the bank asks where a number came from.

5. Review and approve

Someone goes through the rows and approves them, then the calculation runs. An approved row is never overwritten: a correction is a new version with a reason, and the old one stays in the history.

6. Release the report

The revision is locked and the report is produced as PDF and Excel. A locked revision does not change; if a figure is corrected later, a new revision opens and the report you already sent stays as it was.

What is realistic

For a small company's first report, count on a few days of work spread over two or three weeks — most of that is waiting for invoices and for colleagues to answer, not time in the software. Anyone promising a report in half an hour is counting the clicking, not the collecting.