Xero has announced a global partnership with advisor-first carbon accounting platform Sumday to help accountants and bookkeepers globally to manage their own and their clients’ carbon accounting.
As part of the partnership, Xero and Sumday will work together to empower small businesses, with the use of Sumday, to understand their emissions to an audit-ready standard with the help of their trusted advisor – a crucial step towards achieving net-zero carbon emissions for small businesses globally.
Dr Tamara Somers, director of sustainability and ESG at Xero, says: “Regulators are increasingly signalling mandated carbon accounting globally, making it a non-negotiable for businesses large and small. We’re excited to be partnering with Sumday, to enable accountants and bookkeepers on Xero across the world to account for their carbon emissions and support their clients with their efforts.
“Sumday’s commitment to enabling the accounting and bookkeeping community through education on how and why measuring carbon emissions is important is a big part of what drew us to partner with them.”
Jessica Richmond, CEO and co-founder of Sumday, highlights the importance of making carbon accounting business as usual for all organisations. “Carbon accounting to an audit-ready standard must be accessible and affordable to all businesses – whether you’re a public company like Xero or a small business supplier.
“It’s the only way we can credibly track progress towards net-zero. We must make sure businesses aren’t losing out, simply because they can’t provide stakeholders with the emissions data they increasingly need. By partnering with Xero, we can make sure that timely and accurate data is in their hands with the help of an advisor they trust.”
Sumday’s education-first approach equips advisors with the knowledge and software required to offer carbon accounting as a new service for their practice.
“This creates additional revenue opportunities for advisors while helping make audit-ready carbon accounting accessible and affordable for their clients,” says Richmond. “Small businesses can now integrate carbon accounting into their existing financial accounting and reporting, leveraging their accountant or bookkeeper’s expertise.”
Sumday’s integration with Xero provides easy access to relevant financial and activity data. Transaction data can be easily coded to the relevant emissions source in Sumday, and a comprehensive carbon general ledger report prepared in Sumday ensures audit readiness and easy reconciliation with financials. Businesses can see where they stand through working reports and dashboards.
Xero also announced it will use Sumday for its own carbon accounting, enhancing Xero’s in-house carbon accounting expertise in line with global carbon accounting standards and Xero’s own net-zero commitments.
Somers adds: “Xero has firmly established our commitment to sustainability and ensuring that small businesses and their advisors have the tools and education to understand carbon impacts and the role they can play. By partnering with Sumday to enhance Xero’s own carbon emissions reporting, we hope to inspire advisors and small businesses to join the transition to a net-zero economy by taking the leap and accurately measuring their own emissions using the powerful tools connected to the Xero platform.”