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An assessment is a single carbon footprint calculation: one organisation, event, or product, over one defined period or scope. This guide walks through your first one end to end.

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1. Choose the assessment type

From your workspace, create a new assessment and pick the type:
  • Organisation — the footprint of a whole company over a reporting period (usually a financial year). This is the most common starting point.
  • Event — a festival, conference, or one-off activity with a defined start and end.
  • Product — the life cycle footprint of a specific product.
Not sure which fits? See Assessment types for a fuller comparison.

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2. Define the boundary and period

For an organisation assessment, you’ll set:
  • The reporting period — e.g. 1 July to 30 June for an Australian financial year
  • The organisational boundary — which entities, sites, and operations are included
If you have subsidiaries, joint ventures, or shared facilities, it’s worth reading Organisational boundaries before locking this in. For a single-entity company, the default (everything you own and operate) is usually right.

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3. Bring in your data

This is where most of the work happens, and where Salvidia does the heavy lifting. There are two paths, and most assessments use both:

Spend data

Connect your accounting platform or import your ledger. Salvidia categorises your expenses and applies spend-based emission factors — giving you broad Scope 3 coverage quickly.

Activity data

For your biggest sources — electricity, fuel, flights, waste — enter actual quantities (kWh, litres, kilometres). Activity data is more accurate than spend estimates, so use it where it’s available.
The practical rule: let spend data give you coverage, then upgrade your largest categories to activity data. See Activity-based vs spend-based for when each is appropriate, and What data you’ll need for a checklist.

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4. Review the categorisation

Before results mean anything, check that your data landed in the right places:
  • Skim the largest line items and confirm the category Salvidia assigned makes sense
  • Recategorise anything that’s wrong — one large miscategorised invoice can distort a whole category
  • Check for double counting: if you entered electricity as activity data (kWh), make sure the same electricity bills aren’t also being counted as spend

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5. Get your results

Once the data is in, your results appear organised by scope (1, 2, 3) and category (energy, travel, purchases, waste, and so on). From there you can:
  • Explore the breakdown in the dashboard
  • Download reports and tables to share with your team or auditors
  • Compare against future periods once you run your next assessment
Your first assessment won’t be perfect, and it doesn’t need to be. The standard practice in carbon accounting is to be transparent about what’s included, then improve coverage and data quality each year.

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