Small Business and Carbon Accounting – Going Green Brings Benefits

Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has established that those small businesses who give consideration to environment during normal operations have a reason to believe that this will benefit them. This will not only benefit the entity but also their stakeholders and the entire surroundings.

ACCA has issued an article ,‘Technical Factsheet number 190’, regarding the greenhouse gas accounting, also known as carbon accounting, which takes account of environmental performance so that targets can be set and achieved to minimize environmental effects.

David York, technical expert at ACCA, said that this is a good thing for accountants to recommend small businesses and non-profit organizations if they intend to adopt environmental and sustainability reporting. Carbon accounting is suitable for the entities with revenues up to £7million.

David York says that carbon accounting is intentionally kept simple and easy so that it consumes less time and is not that complexity. This carbon accounting will assist companies in minimizing carbon emissions.

Mr. York raised a point that to answer the possible questions by entities about the underlying reasons that why entities adopt carbon accounting, accountants have four reasons to tell, mentioned as follows:

i. Protecting the environment

ii. Business growth

iii. Cost saving

iv. Ultimately happy stakeholders

The factsheet offers nine steps when considering carbon/green accounting, listed as below:

1. Set business objective

2. Decide whether to include all business or some part of it

3. Identify the activities being reason for carbon emissions and those to be accounted for

4. Decide on the start and periodicity of data acquisition

5. Set up a suitable system for all processing and calculations

6. Gather and convert data for current period into the carbon dioxide terms

7. Evaluate the result and set the future reductions targets

8. Take necessary steps to achieve targets

9. Evaluate the later outcomes by comparing them with the previous year