‍Carbon accounting can be a time-consuming and complex task, but with the right tools, it doesn't have to be. Avarni is a powerful, user-friendly carbon management platform that simplifies the process of carbon accounting. In this article, we’ll share the five reasons why Avarni is better than a traditional carbon accounting spreadsheet when it comes to tracking your emissions and identifying hotspots in your supply chain.

How emissions are calculated

Before we jump into the ways that Avarni is better than a carbon accounting spreadsheet, let’s quickly review how emissions are typically measured:

• Activity-based data is the actual detailed GHG assessment for every activity in your value chain. While this method can be very accurate, it can also be tedious and time-consuming to collect this vast data from all your suppliers.
• ‍Spend-based data takes the financial value of a purchased good or service and multiplies it by an emission factor. This returns an estimate of emissions per financial unit. While it is a rough proxy for activity-based data, it is a useful way to begin to measure your organization’s carbon emissions, with the goal of eventually receiving consistent activity-based data from your entire supply chain.

Avarni combines both activity-based and spend-based data in its carbon emissions analysis, providing a comprehensive view of your carbon footprint, and allowing you to quickly identify hotspots in your supply chain and begin to take appropriate action.

How Avarni is better than a carbon accounting spreadsheet

Now that we’ve reviewed how Avarni calculates carbon emissions, let’s review how it does it better than a spreadsheet:

1. Streamlined data entry

Traditionally, companies have used spreadsheet-based approaches to identify and manage their carbon emissions. This typically involves manually entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and running calculations to generate reports. While this method is relatively low-cost, it is a time-consuming exercise. Furthermore, it provides a limited view of an organization's emissions, and is not as secure or reliable as a software-based solution such as Avarni.

Avarni simplifies the process of data entry in a few ways:

• Avarni’s AI-driven platform lets you import your data into the system no matter what the structure or taxonomy of your input data. This proprietary world-first natural language processing AI — and completely automated solution — makes it easy to import your data and can save you weeks or even months preparing and importing data.‍
• Avarni integrates with over 1,000 leading software platforms including Coupa, Microsoft Power BI, NetSuite, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Xero. Leveraging secure API integrations to these trusted third-parties can save you significant time and effort in gathering and organizing your spend and activity data for emissions identification.‍
• Avarni lets you invite suppliers to measure and report their emissions for free. By allowing suppliers to easily calculate their own emissions from Scopes 1-3, and set their own SBTi-approved targets, you create a complete picture of your own value chain emissions. This vendor engagement feature ensures the data being reported is secure and consistently reported, and allows you to work together towards your decarbonization goals and targets.

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2. Automated emissions calculations

Once the data is loaded into Avarni and automatically cleaned, the real magic begins. Avarni’s powerful AI automatically maps emission factors across millions of rows of business spend and activity data. This significantly simplifies the review process and offers you a host of benefits, including:

• Reliable sources: Source emission factors from government agencies like EPA, NGER, DEFRA, and third parties like EXIOBASE.
• Custom emission factors: You may also to override any predicted emission factor mappings with your own custom/specific factors.
• Efficiency: Detailed, accurate factor mappings for even the largest data files in minutes instead of weeks.
• Flexibility: Flag, exclude and bulk edit data rows after importing as you go back and forth with your team and receive clarifications.
• User-friendly interface: Leverage Excel pivot table-like multi-field filtering, sorting and grouping in a familiar interface to cut down review times by over 90%.
• Transparency: Avarni’s calculations completely disclose the emission factors that it uses, including the conversion factors themselves, the year, and source of factors. Avarni is unique in the market of carbon accounting in this way, and many other solutions do not offer this level of transparency. This means that all of Avarni’s calculations are fully auditable; and they can be exported from the platform for reporting and assurance standards.

Avarni can provide significant time and cost savings for your organization. Our customers have reported that, on average, Avarni reduces the time they spend on manual emissions tracking by 93% and cost by 305%.

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3. Insights-driven sustainability reports

Avarni’s user interface is designed for ease and efficiency, enabling you to quickly grasp your organization’s emissions data, produce detailed emissions reports for all your stakeholders, and target areas where emission reductions will be most impactful.

• Visualize your emissions: Generate detailed visualizations that break down your carbon emissions by: category, country, department, or location, scope, supplier, and more.
• Generate custom reports: Choose from bar charts, line graphs, or pie charts and customize them by grouping, stacking, or filtering through any client data field to highlight key insights.
• Export your data: Easily export charts in PNG, JPG, PDF, or SVG formats for seamless inclusion in reports, or save as spreadsheets to create your own branded graphs in Excel.
• Streamline your reporting: Get the data you need for reporting purposes under standards and frameworks such as CDP, CSRD, GHG Protocol, GRI and TCFD.

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4. Strategic forecasting tools

Unlike a carbon accounting spreadsheet, Avarni’s powerful emissions forecasting features makes it easy to forecast what your future emissions will look like under various models.

• Forecasting: Explore how changes in material or services consumption will affect emissions in future years and compare to your business-as-usual trajectory.
• SBTi impact: Visualize the impact of your supply chain’s SBTi adoption on your  emissions to understand the impact of a supplier engagement program.
• Scenario planning: Compare scenarios against your disclosed or planned net zero targets to understand the gap that needs to be addressed.
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5. Automatic audit logs

Unlike spreadsheets, Avarni’s automatic audit logging feature ensures a robust audit trail, offering transparency and accountability unmatched by manual methods.

With detailed logs, you can track every change in the Emissions Hub, including the exact time and the user responsible for each modification. This meticulous record-keeping ensures comprehensive change tracking, making it easier for auditors to verify the accuracy and integrity of your data. Whether correcting an error, updating emission factors, or making adjustments based on new information, every action is documented.

This feature not only facilitates smoother audits but also showcases your commitment to precision and accountability in carbon management practices.
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Replace your carbon accounting spreadsheet with Avarni

Avarni replaces the traditional carbon accounting spreadsheet, enabling you to collaborate with your team and greatly improving the process of emissions management. It provides you with a range of powerful features including streamlined data entry, automated emissions calculations, insights-driven sustainability reports, strategic forecasting tools, and automated audit logs that can save time and effort and accelerate your organization’s decarbonization journey.

Get in touch today to learn more about Avarni and how we can help with your carbon accounting and emissions management.