Why is it cheaper to prepare for ASRS early?
Preparing early for your ASRS reporting is cheaper because it avoids the four biggest avoidable costs in a first climate disclosure: rework after your auditor challenges your approach, peak-season rates for external support, coordinating internal teams under year-end pressure, and hiring extra people to absorb a compressed workload. This article explains what drives compliance costs and how to control them.
Compliance Cost Drivers
AASB S2, the climate standard within the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (ASRS), sets what you must disclose and when you must lodge it, but not when you should start preparing. That choice has a large effect on what the disclosure ends up costing. A first climate report involves decisions that your auditor will later test, input from people across finance, risk and operations, and often some external support. Done over several months, each of these is manageable and can be sorted out in order. Squeezed into the weeks before audit season, they start to compound: decisions get made before the auditor's view is known, mistakes are found late, and help has to be bought when it is most expensive. Most of the avoidable cost comes from four sources.
Rework after your auditor challenges your approach. The biggest avoidable cost is work done once, challenged by your assurance provider, and done again, with each round adding to both preparation time and your audit fee. The usual cause is a decision made before the auditor's view was known, and the most damaging is the reporting boundary, because emissions, the climate risk assessment and the metrics all build on it. Agreeing your boundary and methodology with your auditor in the quieter months, before they are testing year-end financial statements, turns their review into confirmation rather than discovery. There is more on how to define your reporting boundary here.
Peak-season rates for external support. Advisers and assurance teams are stretched across many clients in peak reporting season. Support bought late costs more, is harder to secure, and leaves less choice over who does the work.
Internal coordination under pressure. A late fix means pulling finance, risk, operations and the company secretary together while they are also closing the year. The cost shows up in overtime, delayed sign-offs and errors made in a hurry.
Extra headcount to absorb a compressed workload. Climate reporting draws on people who already have full roles: the CFO, financial controller, risk lead and sustainability manager. Spread over several months, their contribution is a manageable few hours at a time. Compressed into a few weeks, it usually becomes a case for a temporary hire or contractor, which is a cost that early preparation avoids entirely.
Trace's viewpoint and approach
The cheapest disclosure is the one you only have to prepare once.
Almost every cost overrun we see in first-year reporting traces back to rework, and almost all rework traces back to a decision made before the auditor's view was known.
Engaging your assurance provider early is the single most effective way to reduce total cost, including your audit fee.
Starting early also keeps the report proportionate. Under time pressure, entities tend to add content defensively, which expands what has to be assured and what has to be repeated in year two. With time to plan, it is easier to hold to Minimum Viable Compliance (MVC): the smallest report that fully complies and withstands assurance.
“Without a partner like Trace, we would probably have overcomplicated our approach, requiring a lot more effort across all stakeholders and making it much less successful.”
— Tom Nisevic, CFO, Metro Trains Sydney, Group 1 reporter
Trace Proactive Pricing
Trace offers proactive pricing for work delivered outside peak reporting season. Our capacity is less constrained in those months, and we would rather pass that on than see clients pay a premium for a compressed timeline. See our standard pricing here.
Proactive Pricing includes a discount of up to 20% based on upfront invoicing of the Total Trace Programme Fee, delivered within the pre-defined delivery window. If the client chooses to defer a workstream, Trace will reschedule it into the next available implementation window which may result in a loss of the discount.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Our first reporting year has already started. Is it too late to benefit from preparing early? No. The savings come from doing the work before audit season, not before the reporting year begins. If you engage your auditor on boundary and methodology now and spread the remaining work across the months you have, you still avoid most rework and peak-season cost. The one area with less flexibility is governance, which needs to be evidenced across the period, so prioritise getting climate onto the board or committee agenda as soon as possible.
Q: What should we actually discuss with our auditor this early? Focus on the decisions that everything else depends on: your reporting boundary, how you will determine materiality, which scenarios you plan to use, and what evidence they will expect for governance and data. You are not asking them to assure anything yet. You are confirming that the approach they will later test is one they can accept, so their review becomes confirmation rather than challenge.
Q: Do we need to hire someone to prepare our ASRS report? Usually not, if you start early enough. The work draws on people already in finance, risk and sustainability roles, and spread over several months it fits alongside their existing responsibilities. The need for an extra hire or contractor tends to arise when the work is compressed into the weeks before lodgement.
Q: Will preparing early reduce our audit fee? It reduces the parts of the fee that are avoidable. Assurance fees rise when the auditor has to challenge an approach, wait for revised work and test it again. Agreeing the approach upfront and presenting a well-documented evidence pack reduces those extra rounds. The scope of assurance is set by the standard and does not change with timing.