How do we tie our emissions data back to the general ledger?

You reconcile the spend or volume behind each emissions source to the ledger accounts that record it, and you document the differences. It is not a perfect tie and it is not meant to be. The point is completeness: the ledger is the only population in the business already complete and already audited, so it is the natural control total for showing nothing has been left out.

What evidence do we need for each emissions number?

Every reported number needs a source document you did not create for the report, the activity data drawn from it, the emission factor and its published edition, and the calculation joining them. Fleet fuel needs litres from fuel card statements, electricity needs kWh by site from retailer invoices with the matching state factor, and refrigerants need kilograms by gas type from service records.

What will our auditor actually ask for?

In year one they ask for evidence behind the disclosures that are actually assured: Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, your governance disclosures, and the specified strategy paragraphs on climate risks and opportunities. In practice that means source documents, a calculation they can rebuild from those documents, and minutes showing the governance you described actually happened.

Glossary›Assurance, audit evidence and working papers›General ledger reconciliation (emissions)

Glossary term

Cluster A · A13

Tier 1 · differentiator

General ledger reconciliation (emissions)

Definition

General ledger reconciliation is the process of tying emissions activity data back to amounts already recorded in the finance system. Fuel litres are agreed to fuel expense, electricity kilowatt hours to electricity invoices and accruals, business travel to the travel expense account. It gives an assurer a control total from a system that is already audited.

No governing instrument

· practice ·

Practice

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In practice
What the assurer does with it
Commonly confused with
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Related terms
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Cluster

A · Assurance, audit evidence and working papers, 47 terms

In practice

This is the technique that turns an unauditable emissions file into an auditable one, and almost nobody in this market publishes on it. The problem it solves is completeness. There is no emissions ledger, so nothing tells you a site is missing. The general ledger does have a control total, it is already subject to financial statement audit, and it is maintained by people who are accountable for it.

The reconciliation is rarely exact and does not need to be. The output is a documented bridge: general ledger fuel expense for the year, less non-fuel items coded to the same account, divided by average price per litre, compared to litres in the emissions inventory, with the difference explained. A bridge that explains most of the balance and names the residual is far stronger evidence than an emissions figure with no bridge at all.

Not every activity reconciles. Scope 3 categories with no monetary counterpart, and refrigerant leakage, generally do not. Say so in the basis of preparation rather than forcing a reconciliation that does not exist.

What the assurer does with it

The assurer treats a documented general ledger reconciliation as the strongest available completeness evidence for Scope 1 and Scope 2, because it starts from a population they can trust. They re-perform the bridge, test the reconciling items, and focus site-level testing on the sites the bridge cannot explain. Where no reconciliation exists, they build completeness evidence from asset registers, lease schedules, utility account listings and property records, which takes longer and produces more queries. The first request in most first-year engagements is a listing of every site, meter and vehicle, agreed to something in the finance system.

Commonly confused with

A financial reconciliation. This one reconciles a physical quantity to a monetary amount, so it is a bridge with assumptions, not a tie-out to the cent.