Scope 3 data collection checklist

Scope 3 is the value-chain footprint: emissions that happen because of you but not at you — what your suppliers produce, what your products do once they leave the warehouse, how your employees travel to work. The GHG Protocol splits it into 15 categories, but no organisation reports on all 15 the same way.

Not every category is obligatory — but coverage expectations are tightening

Scope 3 is governed by materiality: you report the categories that drive your impact. The rule of thumb is to include any category that’s likely to be a meaningful share of your total footprint, that’s strategically important to your sector, or that stakeholders explicitly ask about. Excluding a category is allowed — but the decision must be documented and justified.

That said, regulators and target-setters keep raising the bar:

• CSRD / ESRS E1 already requires disclosure of all material Scope 3 categories, with materiality assessed through a Double Materiality Assessment (DMA).
• SBTi target validation requires ≥67% of Scope 3 covered for near-term targets, ≥90% for net-zero pathways.
• CDP, ISSB S2 and most ESG ratings expect comprehensive disclosure of every relevant category.

Treat materiality as your starting gate, not your ceiling. Most companies that begin with the obvious two or three categories find themselves expected to extend coverage year by year as frameworks tighten.

Already covered in the facilities checklist

Two Scope 3 categories live with your facility data and have their own section in the main checklist:

• Category 1 (water portion) — Purchased water and Category 5 — Waste generated in operations → see Facilities & corporate vehicles: data collection.

Everything else is below.

Categories available in Dcycle

Category 1 — Purchases

Goods and services your organisation buys: raw materials, components, IT equipment, professional services, marketing, software, etc. Calculated spend-based (amount paid × industry emission factor) when supplier-specific data isn’t available.

Expected formats: Excel export from your ERP / accounting system, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Purchase date	Required	When the purchase was made
Supplier	Required	Vendor name
Country of purchase	Required	Where the supplier operates (ISO code)
Product / service description	Required	Used to map to the right emission factor
Amount excl. taxes	Required	In your reporting currency
Currency	Required	EUR, USD, etc.
Category	Recommended	Internal accounting category, if available

Category 2 — Capital goods

Long-lived assets you buy and depreciate: machinery, vehicles, IT hardware, buildings (if owned). Same input shape as Category 1, but tracked separately so the GHG Protocol treats it as a one-off rather than recurring spend.

Expected formats: Excel export from your fixed-asset register, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Acquisition date	Required	When the asset entered service
Asset description	Required	E.g. “industrial oven 3,000 kg/h”, “data centre server rack”
Supplier	Recommended	Vendor name
Country of purchase	Required	ISO code
Amount excl. taxes	Required	Full acquisition value (not annual depreciation)
Currency	Required	EUR, USD, etc.

Category 3 — Fuel- and energy-related activities (FERA)

Emissions from the production of the fuels and electricity you consume — well-to-tank for fuel, transmission losses for electricity. Dcycle calculates this automatically from your Scope 1 and Scope 2 data; no separate upload required.

No action needed — once your combustion, vehicle fuel and electricity invoices are in, FERA is computed on top.

Category 4 — Upstream transport & distribution

Goods transported into your facilities or between your sites by third-party carriers (you don’t own the trucks/ships/planes). Usually the biggest Scope 3 category for goods-heavy businesses.

Expected formats: Excel export from your logistics provider, freight forwarder’s invoices, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Origin	Required	Postcode + country, or city + country
Destination	Required	Postcode + country, or city + country
Weight	Required	In kg or tonnes
Mode	Required	Road, sea, air, rail
Vehicle / vessel type	Recommended	E.g. “articulated truck 40 t”, “container ship 8,000 TEU” — improves factor accuracy
Distance	Optional	Dcycle calculates it from origin/destination if not provided
Shipment date	Required	Date the shipment moved

Category 6 — Business travel

Flights, trains, hotel nights, taxis and rental cars used for work — but only for trips not paid for by the company itself (i.e. expensed by employees and reimbursed). Owned/leased vehicles are Scope 1.

Expected formats: Excel export from your travel management company (TMC) — BCD, FCM, Egencia, Amex GBT — or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Trip date	Required	Date of travel
Traveller (anonymised ID)	Optional	Helps cross-check with HR data
Mode	Required	Flight, train, taxi, rental car, hotel
Origin and destination	Required for flights/trains/cars	Airport codes (IATA), city, or postcode
Distance	Optional	Computed from origin/destination
Class	Recommended	Economy/business/first for flights — emission factors differ significantly
Nights	Required for hotels	Country of the hotel
Amount + currency	Optional	Only needed if no activity data available (spend-based fallback)

Category 7 — Employee commuting

How your employees get to and from work. Collected via survey — there’s no invoice for this.

Expected formats: Survey results exported to Excel/CSV, or manual entry into Dcycle’s built-in commuting survey tool.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Employee (anonymised ID)	Required	Or a survey response ID
Country / city	Required	Where the office is
Mode	Required	Walking, cycling, public transport, motorbike, car (with fuel type), carpool
One-way distance	Required	Per work day, in km
Work days per week / per year	Required	To extrapolate annual distance
Remote-work days	Optional	Used to compute commuting + home-office emissions split

Category 9 — Downstream transport & distribution

Goods transported out of your facilities to your customers, when the carrier is paid by your customer (otherwise it falls under Category 4). Common for B2B sales with EXW/FOB terms.

Same fields as Category 4 (Upstream transport).

Category 10 — Processing of sold products

Emissions from your customers transforming your product before it reaches the end user (e.g. you sell raw aluminium → your customer extrudes profiles → those profiles go to a window manufacturer). Mostly relevant for intermediate / raw-material producers.

Expected formats: Manual entry from product-line analyses.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Product	Required	The intermediate product sold
Units sold	Required	tonnes, m², units — match the activity unit
Processing emission factor	Required	kg CO₂e per unit of processing — usually a Tier 1 sector default or supplier-disclosed value
Reporting period	Required	Start and end date

Category 11 — Use of sold products

Emissions from your customers using your product over its lifetime — fuel burned by cars you sold, electricity used by appliances you sold, refrigerant leaks from HVAC units you sold. The largest Scope 3 category for OEMs, electronics and fossil-fuel companies.

Expected formats: Manual entry from product-line data, often informed by lifecycle assessment (LCA) results.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Product	Required	Product model or SKU
Units sold	Required	Number of products
Lifetime energy / fuel use per unit	Required	kWh/year × years, or litres/year × years
Emission factor for the energy / fuel	Required	Country-specific grid factor or fuel factor
Lifetime	Required	Expected years of use

Category 12 — End-of-life of sold products

What happens to your products after customers are done with them: landfill, recycling, incineration. Relevant for any company selling physical goods.

Expected formats: Manual entry from product-line data.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Product	Required	Product or product family
Units sold	Required	Number of products in the reporting period
Mass per unit	Required	kg of material per product
Material composition	Required	% of each material (plastic, steel, aluminium, glass, paper, etc.)
Assumed end-of-life route	Required	% landfilled, recycled, incinerated — use national averages if you don’t know

Category 14 — Franchises

Scope 1 and 2 emissions of franchisees who carry your brand but operate independently (restaurant chains, retail concepts, hotel groups). Treated as Scope 3 for the franchisor.

Expected formats: Excel summary collected from each franchisee, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Franchise name	Required	Identifier of the franchisee
Country	Required	ISO code
Reporting period	Required	Start / end dates
Scope 1 + Scope 2 emissions	Required	tonnes CO₂e — collected directly from the franchisee
Methodology used	Recommended	Confirms the figure is comparable to your own

Category 15 — Investments

Emissions of companies you’ve invested in (financed emissions). Critical for banks, insurers, asset managers, private equity, and any holding/parent company. Calculated using the PCAF methodology (Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials).

Expected formats: Excel export from your investment management system, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Investee company	Required	Name of the company you invested in
Country / sector	Required	For sector-average factors when company data is unavailable
Investment type	Required	Listed equity, corporate bonds, project finance, mortgages, etc.
Outstanding amount	Required	Current investment value (not the original commitment)
Currency	Required	EUR, USD, etc.
Investee total equity + debt	Recommended	Lets Dcycle compute the attribution factor (your share of the company)
Investee Scope 1 + Scope 2 emissions	Recommended	If reported, much more accurate than sector averages

Materiality assessment: where to start

If you’ve never done Scope 3 before, this is a reasonable order:

1. Estimate first, refine later. Run a rough first calculation using spend data for everything you can (Categories 1, 2, 4 partially) plus surveys for commuting and travel. The first number is always wrong — use it to find the biggest categories.
2. Focus the next year on the top 3 categories that emerged from step 1. Move from spend-based to activity-based data wherever you can.
3. Document exclusions in writing — which categories you excluded, why, and when you plan to revisit. Auditors will ask.

Where to source your data

Category	Primary source	Alternative source
Cat 1 Purchases	ERP / accounting export (full purchase ledger)	Procurement system reports
Cat 2 Capital goods	Fixed-asset register	Finance / depreciation schedules
Cat 3 FERA	Automatic from Scope 1 & 2	—
Cat 4 Upstream transport	Freight forwarder reports (GLEC if available)	Carrier invoices
Cat 6 Business travel	TMC export (BCD, FCM, Egencia, Amex GBT)	Expense reports
Cat 7 Commuting	Dcycle built-in survey	HR-distributed questionnaire
Cat 9 Downstream transport	Same as Cat 4	—
Cat 10 Processing sold products	Product engineering / LCA team	Sector defaults
Cat 11 Use of sold products	Product engineering / LCA team	Sector defaults
Cat 12 End-of-life sold products	Product engineering / LCA team	National waste-treatment averages
Cat 14 Franchises	Franchisee questionnaire	Franchise contract spend × sector factor
Cat 15 Investments	Investee CDP / annual reports	PCAF sector-average factors