Auditor’s guide to accessing the Trace platform

Logging in to Trace

Once you’ve received your login details, use the link provided to you to log in to the Trace platform.

Finding the company’s data

After logging in, you’ll see the platform’s modules listed on the left-hand side of the screen. Select Carbon Accounting to see the following options:

Data: View the data the company has entered and download the related files.
Measure: View the measurement results, including graphs and other outputs.

Opening the measurement period you’re reviewing

Select Data to open the main Data dashboard. If the company reports across multiple entities, the names of the entities included in the reporting are listed on the right-hand side of this dashboard.

To find the measurement period you’re reviewing, select Past cycles. You’ll see three options:

View cycle: Opens the measurement period in view-only mode so you can review the data the company entered, without making changes.
Download audit report: Provides the data entered in each section along with the calculation details, including formulas, emission factors and assumption notes. We recommend using this file to review the calculations for the period you’re auditing. For guidance on reading the report, see How to navigate your audit report.
Download activity and spend data: Provides the raw activity and spend data entered into Trace, without the associated calculations.

Ways to review the data

You can review the company’s data in two ways:

Download the activity and spend data files from Past cycles.
Select View cycle to review the data directly in the platform.

Reviewing data in View cycle

When you select View cycle, you’ll see the six steps the company followed to complete its measurement. The steps below are the most relevant to your review.

Step 3: Employee engagement survey

This step only applies if the company chose to use the employee survey.

Here you can see how many responses the survey received. The survey captures the information used to calculate employee commuting emissions, such as commute patterns and energy used while working from home. You can review the related calculation details in the audit report.

Step 4: Expense data

This section mainly captures Scope 3 emissions. In some cases it also captures Scope 1 emissions, such as spend on fuel for company vehicles.

For each transaction, you can review the supplier name, the expense details and the category it has been mapped to.

Step 5: Activity data

This section captures physical activity data (for example, kilowatt hours of electricity used or kilometres travelled) used to calculate emissions where it’s available, rather than spend data. You can view and expand each category from the left-hand side of the section:

Direct emissions: Fuel and refrigerants.
Electricity, gas and water: Site locations and utility details. If the company used the Smart utility feature for its utility bills, see Guide to Smart Utility Bill Uploads for more detail.
Business travel: Air travel, accommodation and ground transport.
Employee commuting: If the company didn’t use the employee survey, any manually entered data appears here. If the survey was used, you’ll see the number of respondents instead.
Purchased goods and services: This is usually captured through spend data in Step 4. Any additional spend or activity data, such as kilograms of a raw material purchased, is entered here.
Waste
Upstream transport and distribution

Note: Any spend data from Step 4 that’s been mapped to one of these categories also appears under the matching subcategory. Use the navigation icon within each subcategory to go to that data and review it.