Accelerated Compliance
CSRD with Sustaira
What is CSRD and why does it matter?
The CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) is an extension of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and includes significant changes to promote transparency, comparability, and reliability.
CSRD as a whole includes a broader scope of reporting requirements that require companies to disclose more detailed and comprehensive information about their sustainability performance. It covers a wider range of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) topics, including climate change, biodiversity, social aspects, and governance. This increased transparency enables stakeholders to assess a company's environmental and social impact more effectively.
The CSRD introduces digital reporting, leveraging technology to facilitate standardized and structured reporting. It aims to simplify reporting processes, enhance data quality, and enable data comparability across different companies and sectors. Additionally, the directive emphasizes the importance of external assurance, ensuring the reliability and accuracy of reported information.
The CSRD recognizes the growing demand from investors and stakeholders for ESG information to make informed decisions. By mandating comprehensive and comparable sustainability reporting, the directive helps investors assess companies' long-term sustainability and resilience, enabling better-informed investment decisions aligned with ESG goals.
Who needs to adhere to CSRD?
CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) applies to companies that meet two or more of the following criteria:
Over 250 Employees: Companies with a workforce of 250 or more employees are subject to the CSRD reporting obligations.
More than €40 Million in Annual Revenue: Companies that generate annual revenue exceeding €40 million fall under the scope of the CSRD.
More than €20 million in Total Assets: Companies with total assets amounting to €20 million or more are required to comply with the CSRD requirements.
When do I need to prepare?
In short, organizations need to start right now in order to be compliant with CSRD requirements. Early this year CSRD took effect for eligible companies and will require reporting for their corporate fiscal year 2024, which in laymen’s terms means that organizations have this year to figure out how to track ESG & Sustainability data and implement the necessary capabilities and infrastructure to enable proper reporting for 2024.
Beginning in 2024 starting with larger businesses, the qualifying large businesses must disclose a CSRD report based on the initial set of sustainability reporting standards for their 2024 financial year. All EU Member States must comply with CSRD by July 6, 2024.
In 2025, this trend will continue. Companies will repeat the ESG reporting cycle for the fiscal year 2025.
In 2026, EU small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will begin their CSRD reporting using a streamlined reporting system designed for small businesses.
Finally, in 2028 CSRD will expand to international companies with over €150 million in annual revenue in the EU, and with at least one subsidiary or branch in the EU exceeding specific thresholds, will be required to report under the ESRS (CSRD) at a consolidated group level, including non-EU activity.
How can I prepare for CSRD?
It may seem a little daunting looking at CSRD and trying to figure out how to prepare your organization. Worry not, Sustaira’s broad library of knowledge is at your disposal. We regularly share guidance on best practices in this area. See our blog with our step-by-step CSRD guide here.
In to summarize however, firstly don’t panic, get your ducks in a row and take stock of what you’ve got to do. Start with a legal scoping exercise to understand your obligations. Then conduct a Double-materiality assessment to see what topics are important for you to report on. Following this, you should perform a gap assessment to understand the scale of the task ahead of you.
Performing a data mapping & planning exercise is necessary to make sure everyone and everything that needs to be measured and recorded is ready for your reporting deadline.
Important to remember: you’re not in this alone! Ask for help, from inside and outside your organization. Especially be sure to speak to legal, finance and your assurance partners to make sure everything is above board. This at the end of the day is a legal necessity, so please ensure that as a sustainability director or manager you are not approaching this alone.
Download our CSRD guide here, or keep reading to explore our dedicated CSRD Solution.
Ready to get started?
CSRD With Sustaira
Accelerated Compliance with Sustaira’s dedicated CSRD disclosures app…
An overview:
Sustaira’s dedicated disclosures app will be your organization’s guide to achieving compliant CSRD reporting in no time. The app works hand in hand with our wider portfolio of sustainability apps and services to ensure end-to-end compliance. This app is built within our general disclosures app, so you can find many more templates than just CSRD, ensuring that the data your measure and prepare for CSRD compliant disclosures can be used for many reasons, and take your sustainability reporting to the next level.
Endless Standards Supported:
ESRS | CDP | SEC Disclosures
Bursa Malaysia | SEC Disclosures
TCFD
Any many more!
You can manage and access many templates for preparing for your first disclosure. Also you can create custom templates for producing internal reports, so you can keep your board up to date on progress towards building your report.
The landing page of the CSRD app gives you an simple view of current and past disclosures you are preparing, so you can also see at a glance how much progress you have made towards preparation.
Naturally with over a 1000 data points possible to be within a report it can be very hard for ESG managers to keep track of how much work is still to be done. With our disclosures app this pain is solved, and you can easily see how much is still outstanding.
Creating a new disclosure here is also possible, one can easily set the start and finish dates for which the report is valid, and set the all important deadline for final report.
Sustaira understands that Sustainability and ESG is not just a single disclosure or yearly report, but instead, it’s a journey that we outline through the Sustaira Sustainability Circle seen above. Sustainability and ESG start with goal setting, data aggregation, and awareness, taking action, seeing the results and rewards of those actions, and then of course the ever-important reporting and disclosures.
Sustaira is the only software and solutions provider that implements a low-code, building block approach to ESG and sustainability. Using this low-code approach, Sustaira has pre-built application templates or building blocks within and between all domains of goals, actions, etc. If you look at any of the categories on the Sustaira Sustainability circle you will see a solution that pertains to that domain. All Sustaira applications or solutions are meant to be a starting point that you then expand on, customize, and add to at any time. This allows you to implement a solution sooner, with the flexibility of customization to ensure that whatever you do adopt, completely fits your needs now, and has the option to grow and change with you as those needs or requirements change. With Sustaira, you can be sure that you will be prepared for the CSRD requirements of 2024, and ensure you can stay compliant should the requirements shift moving forward.
Finally, Sustaira has an open and collaborative partnership approach in its go-to-market and implementation approach. With a strong partnership with global Fortune 500 organization, Siemens and their leading low code platform, Mendix, Sustaira offers a building block approach that translates into highly flexible customization options, seamless integration capabilities, and overall agility to allow organizations to adjust to any future stakeholders requirements or policy changes that are expected. The organization is also strategically partnering with global and regional ESG and Sustainability Consultancy firms and technology providers and implementation partners. Sustaira’s local presence across the globe directly and through partners, enables an intimate understanding of the country’s needs, resulting in tailored Sustainability and ESG enterprise solutions.
Need help exploring software and solutions providers?
Download the Evaluation Criteria Framework for ESG & Sustainability Software Now!
This framework is an easy to use checklist that organizations can reference as to do comparisons. This gives you a space to walk through all of the ESG and Sustainability Criteria that Sustaira has aggregated for organizations to consider when looking for a sustainability and ESG solution. Compare between multiple vendors and find the best fit for you!
Want a demo of our CSRD Solution?
We are committed to staying up to date on new CSRD updates or requirements. Join our waitlist to get updates regarding CSRD as well as helpful resources!
What People Are Saying about Sustaira
“Sustaira makes it easier to aggregate and report sustainability and ESG data, while also making it actionable, insightful and rewarding.”
— Suzanne Kopcha, Siemens Digital Industries Software Vice President of Strategy
“Sellen needed a Sustainability Platform that would enable us to track metrics for our current reporting commitments and provide additional features as our sustainability journey continues. The platform and custom application that we co-created with Sustaira enabled us to expand the breadth of our carbon accounting efforts and integrate them with our Contractor’s Commitment reporting”
— Angi Rivera, Sellen’s Director of Sustainability
“The flexibility of Sustaira’s platform provides a robust solution and centralizes sustainability reporting challenges for companies of any size. In partnering with Sustaira’s development team, we have created an application to accelerate a data-driven future”
— Jenny Moshea, Sellen’s Chief Information Officer
“Sustaira is great, and very user-friendly. It’s a platform any organization can utilize to improve stewardship and sustainable practices in terms of: Accounting, metric tracking, action items tracking, footprint calculators and educational resources. We see great value in our Goals and KPI Tracker Application. It offers a lot of direction and capability that helps us move the needle in sustainability.”
— - Tyler Kanczuzewski, Sustainability Manager at Logistick
More ways to adopt Sustaira
Sustaira has created building-block applications that address the key challenges in Sustainability and ESG, but unlike other applications, these have the flexibility and customization options to fit any of your unique needs. Select the applicable apps from our menu and see which applications you would want to start ith. We also develop completely custom apps. All your apps are then centralized in the Sustaira launchpad. Sustaira makes it easy for you to get started today!
Sources:
KPMG: "The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)" [Link: https://kpmg.com/nl/en/home/topics/environmental-social-governance/corporate-sustainability-reporting-directive.html#:~:text=The%20Corporate%20Sustainability%20Reporting%20Directive%20(CSRD)%20requires%20companies%20to%20report,(assurance)%20of%20reported%20information.]
Normative: "CSRD Explained" [Link: https://normative.io/insight/csrd-explained/#:~:text=The%20Corporate%20Sustainability%20Reporting%20Directive,their%20climate%20and%20environmental%20impact.]
Brightest: "CSRD: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive" [Link: https://www.brightest.io/csrd-corporate-sustainability-reporting-directive]
Brightest. (n.d.). Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Retrieved from https://www.brightest.io/csrd-corporate-sustainability-reporting-directive