Trace is a world leading Carbon Management platform. Our mission is to empower every business to make and share progress to Net Zero. We know the the journey to get there is not a straight line. Trace helps you at each stage, at your pace, aligned to your goals.

Our intuitive software and team of sustainability experts ensure you can understand your decarbonisation pathway, confidently respond to reporting requirements, and engage your staff & suppliers on climate.

Founded in 2020, we've measured thousands of footprints across 3 continents and helped SMEs from all industries to measure, report and reduce their carbon emissions.

Trace’s carbon accounting (aka carbon emissions calculation) methodology aligns to the standards outlined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (otherwise known as the ‘GHG Protocol’, ‘The Protocol’ or ‘GHGP’ for short).

The GHG Protocol is the leading international guideline for carbon accounting and forms the foundation for Trace’s methodology. The GHGP defines the scope of activities that must be included in a company’s carbon footprint and creates a standardised emissions measurement methodology. The GHGP guidelines were developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in collaboration with governments, industry associations, NGOs, and corporations.

Trace applies the standards from the following documents:
1. Corporate Standard which including Scope 2 Guidance
2. Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard

‍The Corporate Standard is considered the “gold standard” for corporate emissions measurement around the world. The Protocol is the foundation for most global climate reporting standards, including the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which has been adopted by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), and the Science Based Targets Initiative.

‍“GHG emissions should be calculated in line with the GHG Protocol methodology to allow for aggregation and comparability across organizations and jurisdictions.” - TCFD

‍“Companies must follow the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, Scope 2 Guidance, and Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard.” - SBTi

You can read more about our methodology here

1. Membership period: the period of your annual subscription to the Trace portal. Starts the day your membership fee is charged, and automatically renews on a recurring annual basis.

2. Measurement period: the period of activity data submitted to Trace for your CO2 assessment. You can view current and past measurement cycles in the 'Data' tab on your Trace portal.

3. Carbon impact period: represents the period of validity of your Trace badge. Begins from the day you pay to offset your emissions (optional). The expiry month is shown on the badge.

N.B. the measurement period cannot be more than 9 months old at the time the carbon impact period begins (i.e. to achieve carbon status, the CO2 assessment must represent data which is less than 9 months old).

At Trace we wholeheartedly adopt and encourage the approach of measuring and reducing emissions, then compensating for irreducible emissions by investing in credible and robust carbon offsetting projects, in that order. While absolute emissions reduction through strategic initiatives should be everyone's primary focus, we do see a place for carbon offsetting for the following reasons:
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- They represent an easy way to make a quick impact by compensating for currently irreducible emissions
- Investment in offsets helps to fund amazing projects around the world which otherwise couldn't happen, also resulting in a host of co-benefits for the communities involved
- Committing to offsetting can serve as a financial incentive for a business to make actual emissions reductions, reducing the required expenditure to offset and turning emissions reduction into more of a cost saving activity

All projects that we invest in have been third-party verified, and our reputable broker also performs their own due diligence to ensure the projects meet our standards of transparency, credibility and additionality.

A Carbon neutral certification under the Climate Active programme requires companies to hire an independent consultant to complete a comprehensive analysis of your operations and supply chain emissions. This is time and cost intensive and often a barrier for many companies to take action. That’s why we created Trace - to make it straightforward and accessible to take climate action whatever your size & budget. You can read more about the differences between Trace and Climate Active here

Trace now allows you to integrate with Xero, reducing the need for manual line item input during data collection. We'll be rolling out integrations with more accounting platforms in the next 6 months.

To get started, you need to authorise access to Xero via the Trace portal.

Don’t have Xero admin access? You can also have your Xero administrator authorise access.

Using something other than Xero? Email us at hello@our-trace.com to let us know.

Please follow this guide below.

You may disconnect your integration at any time by clicking this button

Xero offers multiple APIs to access data; we are only using the Bank Transactions & Invoice APIs, not the Payroll API
- This means that if you are using the payroll system in Xero, we (and therefore your team on the Trace app) do not get access to an individual's salary.
- Wages may come through on the transactions API as one aggregated line item i.e. total wages debited with no further detail as to how that is broken down.
- As this line item is not of interest to us for our analysis we filter it out prior to Trace staff or your staff interacting with the UI.
- Other items that we would filter out include Taxes & superannuation as this is not relevant to carbon footprint analysis
- The only scenario where we may see more detail is for contractors that do not go through the payroll system, they may (depending on how you structure this in Xero) come through as single line items. It is not easy for us to apply rules to exclude this automatically but you can do this through our app afterwards.

The Bank Transactions & Invoice APIs allows us to query all transactions. The info that is relevant to our analysis is what you spend money on so we only look and display "debits" in the UI, not credits.
- This means that we do not see revenue through how we access Xero
- Neither Trace staff or your staff using the UI would see credit info.

You can find more detailed information about the data we store on our Terms of service here.

No, this is a read-only integration, meaning we will just read and analyse the data from your Xero. We will not be adding, modifying, or deleting any data in your Xero account.