Meet AASB S2 with confidence, without over-engineering year one

Trace combines AI-powered software with expert advisory support, so Australian mandatory reporters can deliver audit-ready AASB S2 disclosures in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional consulting.

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Trusted by Mandatory Reporters

ASRS compliance,
explained in 60 seconds.

ASRS S2 is Australia's mandatory climate-related financial disclosure standard, issued by the Australian Accounting Standards Board as AASB S2.

It applies in 3 phased cohorts:

Group 01

Financial years starting on or after 1 January 2025

$500 million revenue,
$1 billion assets, or
500 employees, and NGER publishers above the threshold.

Group 02

From 1 July 2026

$200 million revenue,
$500 million assets, or
250 employees, plus large super funds

Group 03

From 1 July 2027

$50 million revenue,
$25 million assets, or
100 employees

Each cohort must disclose governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets relating to climate, alongside their financial statements.

Disclosures are externally assured under ASIC oversight.

Trace helps mandatory reporters deliver these disclosures across two tiers: Minimum Viable Compliance for Year One reporters who need a defensible, fixed-scope filing, and Best Practice for reporters ready to go beyond the minimum with modular upgrades across scenario analysis, Scope 3, governance, and transition planning.

For a full explainer of ASRS S2 requirements, read the
‍AASB S2 and ASRS hub.

Talk to an Expert

The Challenge

Climate reporting is now mandatory.And most solutions are making it harde than it needs to be.

Climate reporting is now mandatory.
And most solutions are making it harder than it needs to be.

What is actually mandatory?

The standards are substantial and the guidance is fragmented. Teams spend months separating mandatory from optional, often getting conflicting answers from advisors who are still building this out themselves.

Your climate disclosure will be externally audited.

Get it wrong and you'll face costly back-and-forth with your auditor, disclosure amendments, and the kind of board-level scrutiny that's hard to walk back. The cost of fixing it consistently far exceeds the cost of doing it right the first time.

Traditional approaches overshoot year one.

Large consulting firms default to expensive, bespoke projects. Generic software leaves critical gaps in defensibility. Neither is actually built for what you need in year one.

Treasury estimates ASRS preparation will cost large organisations between $750,000 and $1.6 million. The difference between the low and high end is usually approach, not complexity.

The Trace Method

Two ways we deliver AASB S2,
matched to your stage & needs.

Trace offers two delivery tiers for AASB S2 compliance, designed to meet customers where they are.

Most Year One reporters start with Minimum Viable Compliance. Mature reporters, or customers who want to go beyond the minimum from day one, use Best Practice.

Both are audit-ready. Both are delivered by the same ASRS specialist team. The difference is depth and breadth, not quality.

Recommended for Year One Reporters

Minimum Viable Compliance

Comply faster - defensible, audit-ready first filing with less cost and burden.

Distills 268 pages of standards into Year 1 compliance essentials

Breaks work into manageable, structured phases

Spreads cost over time for easier budgeting

Embraces AI to remove up to 80% of manual effort

Delivers audit-ready reporting

Best suited for

Those wanting to comply with minimum burden and are exposed to limited climate-related risks and opportunities.

Mature Reporters & Organisations Aiming Beyond Minimum

Best Practice

Go beyond compliance to build decision ready climate capability.

Applies deeper analysis within ASRS requirements

Aligns with all ASRS disclosure topics (including optional disclosures)

Enhanced governance risk management for high risk businesses

Provides the detail and education to really upskill your team

Strengthens data controls and assurance readiness

Delivers clearer, more decision useful reporting for strategic insights

Best suited for

Market leaders, those using climate strategically, and companies that have higher exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities.

Our solution

Flexibility to suit your budget, capacity &
internal capability

Most customers begin with MVC and transition to Best Practice modules as their reporting evolves. Some choose Best Practice right from the start.

We’ll assist you in selecting the right tier during your scoping call, ensuring flexibility to suit your needs.

Shared commitments across both tiers:

Meets AASB S2 requirements for your reporting cohort

Proportionate to your size, sector, and data maturity

Externally audit-ready, with a complete evidence trail built in

Delivered by the same ASRS specialists, powered by Trace AI

Fixed scope, so cost always stays predictable

Designed to scale as AASB S2 expects disclosure quality to improve

Book an ASRS scoping session to map your compliance roadmap.

Book a Call

Our Services

Everything you need for
climate compliance. Nothing you don’t.

Metrics and Targets

Carbon accounting

Audit-ready Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, calculated using GHG Protocol and up-to-date Australian emission factors.

Strategy

Climate Risk Analysis

Physical and transition risk assessments tied to your actual operations, aligned to AASB S2 scenario analysis requirements.

Metrics and Targets

Transition Planning

A realistic decarbonisation pathway and target-setting framework that your board can stand behind.

AASB Disclosures

Disclosures & Reporting

AASB S2-aligned disclosure drafting, ready to publish alongside your annual financial statements.

Governance

Governance Preparation

Board education, oversight structure design, and a governance pack that stands up to auditor and director scrutiny.

AASB Compliance

Readiness Assessments

A 5-minute self-assessment or a comprehensive consultant led analysis giving you a prioritised gap-to-compliance plan for AASB.

Your ASRS Path

How we get you to an audit-ready
AASB S2 disclosure

Below is the full Trace engagement for a Group 1, 2 or 3 reporter preparing a first AASB S2 disclosure. It is deliberately modular.

Most customers do not enter at step one. Some start with readiness, some come to us with a carbon footprint already done and need climate risk and disclosure.

You pay for the modules you need, in the order you need them.

Readiness Assessment

What happens:

A structured gap assessment against AASB S2, covering governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. We score where you are and where you need to be.

What you get:

A scored readiness report, a prioritised action list, and a compliance roadmap sized to your cohort (Group 1, 2, or 3).

Who does the work:

Trace ASRS specialists, with 2 to 3 hours of input from your finance or sustainability lead.

This is an excellent way to upskill your team on what the AASB disclosure requires.

Baseline Carbon Inventory (Scope 1, 2, 3)

What happens:

Trace's sophisticated platform and AI agents ingest your utility bills, invoices, and financial system extracts, classifies transactions against the GHG Protocol, and maps every row to the right emission factor. Our experts review, validate, and sign off.

What you get:

A full Scope 1, 2 and Scope 3 inventory, with a methodology statement and full evidence trail ready for assurance, including basis of prep report.

Who does the work:

Trace AI plus carbon accounting & AASB experts. Your team provides data access; we handle the rest.

Climate Risk and Scenario Analysis

What happens:

Physical and transition risks & opportunities assessment tied to your actual operations and geographies, with scenario analysis aligned to AASB S2 (at minimum, a lower-warming and a higher-warming scenario).

What you get:

A risk register, scenario analysis narrative, and financial impact framing your board can actually use.

Who does the work:

Trace climate risk experts, with input from your operations and strategy leads.

Governance, Metrics and Targets

What happens:

We design or refine climate oversight structures, board reporting cadence, and your metrics and targets framework, so they satisfy AASB S2 requirements without creating governance overhead.

What you get:

A governance pack & guidance that will hold up in audit.

Who does the work:

Trace advisory team plus your company lead.

Draft Disclosure and Evidence Pack

What happens:

Drafting of the full AASB S2 disclosure, aligned to AASB language and structure, ready to publish alongside your annual financial statements. Every figure is traceable back to a source document.

What you get:

A draft disclosure or a template so you can draft yourself, a complete evidence pack for assurance, and a reviewer's guide for your auditor.

Who does the work:

Trace ASRS specialists, with review from your company lead and external assurance provider.

Assurance Support

What happens:

We work directly with your assurance provider, respond to queries, and share source documentation from inside the platform. __

What you get:

A clean assurance cycle with minimal back-and-forth, and a signed-off AASB S2 disclosure.

Who does the work:

Trace plus your assurance provider.

Best Practice — Year Two and Beyond

What happens:

AASB explicitly expects disclosure quality to improve year on year. Our Best Practice modules let you stage that investment, choosing from deeper scenario analysis, expanded Scope 3 coverage, strengthened governance, transition plan development, and assurance-grade evidence tooling.

What you get:

An upgrade path matched to your reporting maturity, priced per module.

How We Deliver

AI-powered. Expert-led.
Audit-ready.

AI alone cannot deliver audit-ready compliance. Consultants alone cannot deliver speed or cost predictability.

Trace is the only ASRS solution built to do both.

Trace automatically ingests unstructured data from any source - utility bills, invoices, financial systems - and transforms it into structured, emissions-mapped data ready for reporting. Our AI reads PDFs, classifies thousands of supplier transactions against GHG Protocol categories, and maps every row to the right emissions factor in minutes. No manual entry. No spreadsheet wrangling.

Tracey, our AI sustainability assistant, answers your toughest ASRS and emissions questions on demand - drawing from an expert-built knowledge base and your company’s own live data. Ask “What are my top 5 emission sources this year?” or “Which suppliers are driving my Scope 3 footprint?” and get precise, cited, data-grounded responses instantly. Expert knowledge, available 24/7.

Trace builds a complete, verifiable audit trail into every calculation, input and source - whether that’s a carbon footprint, climate risk assessment or disclosure report. Every figure is traceable from source data to final output. When your auditor asks for evidence, it’s already packaged and ready to share - no scrambling, no remediation.

Classifying thousands of supplier transactions against GHG Protocol categories is one of the most time-consuming parts of ASRS compliance. Trace’s supplier mapping AI does it automatically - processing in bulk, returning confidence-scored classifications, and mapping every transaction to the right Scope 3 category. What used to take your team weeks now takes minutes.

Trace is trusted by
Australian mandatory reporters.

“Group 1 reporter in construction and engineering. With no in-house carbon expertise, SEE Civil used Trace to complete a full FY24 carbon inventory, run a gap assessment, and prepare a compliance roadmap, all within weeks.” – CFO, SEE Civil

Read the SEE Civil Case Study

Trace is ranked #1 for Usability (8.86 vs Workiva 8.35) and #1 for Results (8.58 vs Denxpert 8.53) in the G2 ESG Reporting Index, and is a Momentum Leader in ESG Reporting and Sustainability Management.

Read the G2 Reviews

Paddy Pallin used Trace to build internal buy-in, lock in scope early, and avoid the last-minute scramble that tripped up many first-round filers.

“By recommending an 18-24 month lead-time, we secured executive approval and budget to do this properly. Starting early meant we avoided the scramble - saving time, money, and a lot of stress.”

Emma

Head of Sustainability, Paddy Pallin

Watch the Video

Free ASRS resources

for mandatory reporters.

ASRS Strategy On A Page

A one-page visual of the four AASB S2 pillars, what each requires, key deadlines, and the step-by-step compliance path. Start here if your team is scoping what ASRS S2 actually involves.

Download

The ASRS Pulse Report 2025

Benchmark your readiness against 20+ ASRS compliant Australian companies. Includes buying criteria, support gaps, and how first-round filers are approaching year one.

Download

The ASRS Prep Pack 2026

Templates, checklists and frameworks to start your AASB S2 implementation. Built for finance and sustainability leads who are ready to move.

Download

AASB Readiness Assessment

A 5-minute self-assessment. Get a compliance gap map and personalised next steps, scored against the four AASB S2 pillars.

Download

6 ASRS Insights from Our Sydney Breakfast with Grant Thornton

9 ASRS Takeaways from Our Sydney Breakfast with SW Advisory

10 AASB S2 Insights from Our Melbourne Breakfast with BDO

Inside Paddy Pallins ASRS Preparation: Stratgy & Buy-in

ASRS S2 Compliance FAQs

Who has to comply with ASRS S2 in Australia? +

ASRS S2 applies to Australian entities in three phased groups. Group 1 starts from 1 January 2025 and covers entities above $500 million revenue, $1 billion assets, 500 employees, or NGER publisher thresholds. Group 2 starts from 1 July 2026 for entities above $200 million revenue, $500 million assets, or 250 employees, plus large super funds. Group 3 starts from 1 July 2027 for entities above $50 million revenue, $25 million assets, or 100 employees.

Is AASB S2 the same as ASRS S2? +

Yes. ASRS S2 is the government standard, and AASB S2 is how it is implemented by the Australian Accounting Standards Board. In practice, they refer to the same disclosure requirements.

How much does ASRS S2 compliance cost? +

Treasury estimates preparation costs between $750,000 and $1.6 million for large organisations using traditional consulting. Trace's modular approach significantly reduces this, with costs proportionate to your cohort, size, and data maturity.

How long does it take to prepare a first AASB S2 disclosure? +

An audit-ready disclosure covers four pillars: Governance (board oversight of climate), Strategy (risks and opportunities), Risk Management (how you identify and manage climate risk), and Metrics and Targets (Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions and targets). Each section must be supported by documented evidence.

Do we need in-house carbon expertise to comply? +

No. Trace is specifically designed for organisations without in-house carbon teams. Our ASRS specialists do the heavy lifting; your team provides business context and reviews outputs.

What is the difference between Trace's Minimum Viable Compliance and Best Practice tiers? +

MVC is designed for Year One reporters who need a defensible, audit-ready first filing with minimum cost and burden. Best Practice goes deeper across all AASB S2 pillars, adds optional disclosures, and builds strategic climate capability for organisations wanting more than just compliance.

What happens in year two and beyond?

AASB expects disclosure quality to improve each year. Trace is built to scale with you — your data improves, your disclosures deepen, and you can add modules as your maturity grows.

Can Trace support our external auditor or assurance provider?

Yes. Every Trace output includes a full evidence trail built for assurance. We can work directly with your auditor to provide methodology documentation, data provenance, and disclosure support.