Who this is for
Anyone collecting corporate activity data for a reporting year. You work category by category: each one holds its own rows of data, and you fill them as the information reaches you.
Before you start
The assessment has to exist first. An assessment is one business unit and one reporting year together, and the category you are filling belongs to it — see Corporate carbon assessments.
Files are CSV or XLS, up to 10 MB.
You do not need a template. You match your columns to ODOS's fields during the import, so the names and order of the columns in your file do not matter. What does matter is that each column holds the right kind of value: anything you map to a numeric field, such as a quantity, has to contain numbers.
Steps
Open the category
- In the left-hand menu, select Corporate Data, then Assessments.
- Open the scope you are working on. From the assessments list you can go straight to a scope, or select the assessment's name to open the whole assessment first.
- Open the category — for example Scope 3 - Cat 1.
The assessment's Overview tab is the fastest way to see where you are: it lists every scope and category with its rows of data, matching status and calculation status.
Import a file
- Select Actions, then Import File.
- Upload file — choose your CSV or XLS. A file that cannot be read is flagged at this step.
- Map Columns — match each column in your file to the field it belongs in.
- Review & Edit — check the data and change anything that needs it before it goes in. Problems are flagged on the problematic column: text mapped to a numeric field such as quantity shows as an error here.
- Import.
Or add data without a file
Select Add row to enter a single row directly — useful for one purchase you missed rather than a whole file.
Where two categories draw on the same data, Actions also offers Import from other Category, which saves preparing the same file twice.
How to confirm it worked
The category page now shows your rows.
The Alert column is the one to read. It tells you what still has to happen before the category can be calculated, and it stays populated until you have dealt with it. Straight after an import it flags that emission factors are missing. That is expected, and it is the next job after importing data.
Common problems
A column comes in as the wrong kind of value. Fix it at Review & Edit rather than starting again. Nothing is saved until you import, so corrections made there are the ones that land.
Importing twice adds the rows, it does not replace them. Import the same file a second time and you get two copies of every row. Delete the surplus on the category page — you can select individual rows, or the whole table.
Data imported into the wrong category. There is no move. Delete the rows and import the file again in the right place.