Introduction
This guide provides detailed instructions for organisations using the Business and Enterprise tiers of Altruistiq on how to upload product data and calculate Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) using the platform.
Step-by-step process to calculating Product Carbon Footprints
Use the guide and follow the steps to calculate Product Carbon Footprints
Open the link on the Dashboard ('Generate product footprints') to access the guide, or click on the link at the top of the Product Data pages to reference it at any time.
Step 1: Enter data about your organisation structure
We need to know where your products are processed; you’ll then be able to upload the data about their structure and production records and map it to each facility you’ve created. So, as a first step, you’ll need to define the Business Units where your processing/production facilities are located.
Follow the link from Step 1 in the guide, or navigate to ‘Organisation structure’ in the side navigation bar.
Click 'Add Business Unit' and enter the details required.
Repeat this process until you’ve added all the Business Units in which your product processing facilities are located.
💡Tip: Remember that you don’t need to map out your whole organisation; only the parts relevant to where you process the products for which you want to calculate footprints.
Step 2: List the facilities where your products are processed
Next, you need to list the primary facilities where the products to footprint are produced or processed. The ‘primary facility’ is where each product undergoes its main production or processing activities - even if it may pass through other facilities in its lifecycle. In later steps you’ll provide data about the activities at each facility over time (like utility use and waste generation), and then Altruistiq will calculate the total resulting emissions and assign them proportionally to each unit of product.
Follow the link from Step 2 in the guide, or navigate to ‘Facility structure’ in the side navigation bar.
Click “Add facility” and enter the name. Choose the type of facility that best describes yours. On the next page, add the details of the facility. The ‘first active’ date is when the facility opened - even if you don’t know the exact date, for the purposes of calculating PCFs make sure it’s a date earlier than that for which you want to calculate footprints.
Choose the Business Unit within which this facility is located (for this reason it’s important to add the required BUs in Step 1 first).
For PCF calculation, you don’t need to enter Capacity data.
Step 3: List the products you want to footprint
Now you can start to add the Product Data.
Follow the link from Step 3 in the guide, or navigate to ‘Product Data’ in the side navigation bar.
First, you’ll need to add the Products that you’d like to footprint to the Product List. This is a reference list and all your other product data will map to the products here.
Open the ‘Product List’ page.
Next, click ‘Upload Data’, where you’ll be given the option to either download the Altruistiq .xls template (which is preformatted with the required data fields), or simply go ahead and upload your own .xls file containing product details (which you’ll then map to Altruistiq’s fields yourself in the next step).
If you’ve downloaded Altruistiq’s template, open it in your spreadsheet software and enter your product data into all the required columns. If you need any assistance with filling out the spreadsheet, click the ‘Ask Your Advisor’ button in the top right corner of the Altruistiq interface.
Once your completed spreadsheet is ready, save it with a useful name and as an .xls file, and click on the ‘Upload data’ button again to upload it to the platform.
Next, you’ll see our data importer interface, where you need to ensure your data matches Altruistiq’s data structure. If you’ve used our template then this should happen automatically, but - if you’re uploading your own file - you’ll need to map your data to Altruistiq’s fields here.
In the next screen, you’ll need to fix any errors and ensure all data can be uploaded correctly. The platform will highlight errors and suggest corrections and will remember your settings and additions for the future too.
Your Product List page acts as a master reference list of all your products. When making updates to this list, we suggest you export the latest version, make any amendments in your spreadsheet software and then re-upload it, in order to keep it in sync with your internal records;
Upon successful upload, the platform will add new rows for each unique Product ID. If you spot an error in a row of product data, download the list, make the edits in your spreadsheet software and upload this new version. The edits to existing product rows will overwrite the previous data.
You can add more to this list later by following the same process, but ensure that all products that you want to footprint and reference in the next steps are added to the list before proceeding.
💡 Tip: Here is the example of a populated file that the system expects Products list example.xlsx
Step 4: Upload product structure data
Next, you need to upload product structure data, which defines the Bills of Material for each product (its packaging and materials inputs, the quantities of each and their supplier), when it was produced in a certain timeframe. Follow the link from Step 4 in the guide to the ‘Product Data’ page again, and go to the ‘Product Structure Data’ page.
💡 Tip: Before uploading anything, make sure any facilities that you’ll reference in the Product Structure data are already added in ‘Facility Structure’ section of the platform (Step 2), as you’ll need to map one to the other.
Click ‘Upload Data’ and as before, you can choose to either download the Altruistiq .xls template (which is preformatted with the required data fields), or simply go ahead and upload your own .xls file containing your product structure data.
Next, upload your file and use the data importer to map the data to columns, validate it, and correct any errors as in the Step 3. Note that when it comes to mapping product structure data to facilities, if a facility is missing, you'll have to cancel the upload, add the missing facility (Step 3), and restart the process.
If the file is accepted and uploaded successfully, you will see an ‘Integrated’ status. If you see ‘Error’, click the ‘Ask your advisor’ icon in the top right corner to get assistance from our Customer Success Team;
Upon successful upload, the system will add a new version of a bill of materials list valid from a certain date. Edits to existing product structure rows you make in the file you upload will overwrite previous data if the ‘Product ID’, ‘Facility’ and ‘Valid from’ date match. Otherwise, a new product structure record will be added.
Before proceeding to the next step, ensure that all Product Structure (bill of materials) data is added for all the products that you want to footprint.
You can review the Product Structure data files that have already been uploaded by navigating to the ‘Product Structure data’ page at any time.
💡 Tip: Here is the example of a populated Product Structures file that the system expects Product structures example.xlsx
Step 5: Upload production records
This data will tell us the quantities of each product (and their respective product structure/bill of materials) that were produced or processed at each facility within certain timeframes.
Follow the link from Step 5 in the guide to the ‘Product Data’ page again, and go to the ‘Production Records’ page.
Tip: Before uploading anything, make sure any facilities that you’ll reference in the Production Records are already added in ‘Facility Structure’ section of the platform (Step 2), as you’ll need to map one to the other.
The process here is the same to follow in Step 4: click ‘Upload Data’ and choose to either download the Altruistiq .xls template or simply go ahead and upload your own .xls file containing your production records data.
Next, upload your file and map and validate the data, and correct any errors. Note that when it comes to mapping production records to facilities, if a facility is missing, you'll have to cancel the upload, add the missing facility (Step 2), and restart the process.
If the file is accepted, you will see the ‘Processing’ status. Once the file is uploaded successfully, you will see the ‘Integrated’ status. If you see ‘Error’ or ‘In testing’, please click the ‘Ask your advisor’ icon in the top right corner to get assistance from our Customer Success Team.
Upon successful upload, the system will add the quantities of the products processed in a specific facility in a provided period, following the product structure (if added). Edits to already uploaded product quantities for a given production time period are not supported. A new upload will add production quantities from the uploaded file.
You can review the Product Structure data files that have already been uploaded by navigating to the ‘Production Records’ page at any time.
💡 Tip: Here is the example of a populated file that the system expects Production Records example.xlsx
At this stage, Altruistiq has enough data from Steps 1-5 to start calculating the carbon emissions for each product according to its structure and details of its production records. When the calculations are complete, you’ll be able to see the initial Product Carbon Footprints in the Analyse section of the platform.
Step 6: Review total product quantities per facility
To calculate complete product footprints, we need to include the emissions from the processing activities (e.g. from utility use or waste) at each facility, which you’ll upload in Step 7. First, we need to know the total quantity of all products processed at each facility so that we can assign the proportional amount of total emissions.
Follow the link from Step 6 in the guide to the ‘Total Product Quantities’ page, in the Product Data section.
You will need to review the data here. It will be automatically populated from the Production Records data that you’ve uploaded in Step 5. The platform will infer the total quantity of product processed at each facility (in tonnes) by summing all quantities provided in the ‘Production Records’ datasets.
However, this value will be incorrect if you are creating product footprints (and uploading production records) for a only a subset of products at a given production facility, rather than all products. In this case, you can manually override the inferred value, and provide the real (greater) total of all products.
💡 Tip: It's important that the value represents the total quantity of all products processed at each facility in the given time period. This value is required in order to perform accurate allocation of facility processing emissions.
Step 7: Upload corporate data for each processing facility
This is when you upload the activity data at each facility; Altruistiq will then be able to calculate the carbon emitted when producing and processing each product. You should upload data to cover a variety of activities that make up a carbon footprint, within the activity areas of Utility Use, Waste Generation and Direct Gas Release.
Follow the link from Step 7 in the guide, or go to ‘Corporate Data’ in the side navigation bar.
Click ‘Add data source’; you’ll need to create a data source for each activity and upload method (the way you’ll provide the data).
In the next screen, select the ‘Product Carbon Footprints’ option on the left, then give the data source a name.
Next, select the method to use for uploading the data to this data source. You can use the ‘Data Importer’ (the same tool used to upload and map data in Steps 3-6 above), the PDF file upload (for when you want to upload data in PDF format, like energy bills), or Raw Data, if you've opted to build a custom pipeline to import your data.
Finally, select the activity that this data source will cover. Note that you can only cover one activity per data source when uploading data via the Data Importer. Click “Create data source” to finish.
Now you can upload data to the data source via your chosen method.
If the file is accepted, you will see the ‘Processing’ status. Once the file is uploaded successfully, you will see the ‘Integrated’ status. If you see ‘Error’ or ‘In testing’, please click the ‘Ask your advisor’ icon in the top right corner to get assistance from our Customer Success Team.
Repeat the process above in this step to provide data for all the processing activities at each facility in the timeframes for which you’re calculating footprints (these should cover the dates and locations of your production records).
When the data uploaded in Step 7 has been processed by Altruistiq and the emissions calculated, they’ll be displayed in the relevant Product Carbon Footprints in the Analyse section of the platform. In each PCF you’ll also be able to see if there are any data gaps, where you might want to upload more activity data to generate a more accurate, complete PCF.
Review your product emissions in Product Carbon Footprints
Once all steps are complete and the calculations have completed:
Navigate to ‘Products’ in the Analyse section to view the calculated carbon footprints of your products.
When new data is entered or updated, the emissions are recalculated. The timestamp at the top of each product page reflects the last time the emissions were recalculated so that you can ensure the latest data has been accounted for.
Revising and adding more data
At any point in the process, you can return to previous steps and add or update the data you’ve provided. However, please note that when adding new information, it’s important to follow the correct order:
Add new products and facilities first: this ensures that the Product Structure data and Production Records can be accurately mapped to this reference data during the import process.
Once the products and facilities are added, you can continue updating the Product Structure data and Production Records as needed.