Guide
What documents do you need to calculate a small business carbon footprint?
Start with your electric bills, your gas, propane or heating oil bills, your fuel receipts or fleet card statements, and any HVAC service records that show refrigerant added. Those cover Scope 1 and Scope 2: the energy your business burns directly and the electricity it buys. Then add shipping, waste, water, travel and purchases for Scope 3. On every document, use the usage (kWh, therms, gallons), not the dollar amount, and gather a full calendar year if you can.
Three scopes in one minute
Scope 1 is fuel your business burns directly, plus refrigerant that leaks from equipment you control.
Scope 2 is the electricity you buy.
Scope 3 is everything else in your value chain: shipping, waste, water, travel and the things you buy.
Scopes 1 and 2 usually come from a small stack of bills, and their numbers come straight from meter readings and fuel receipts.
The core documents (Scope 1 and 2)
One rule covers all of them: use usage, not dollars. Dollars move with rates, taxes and fees. Usage is what drives emissions. A rate increase can push a bill up in a month when you used less.
1. Electric bills (Scope 2)
What to read: kilowatt-hours (kWh) used in the billing period.
Where it sits: the usage or meter section, usually a small table with the previous read, current read and total kWh. Many bills also show a 12-month usage chart, which is a quick way to spot a missing month.
Watch for: a delivery or distribution charge line that lists the same kWh again. If a community choice provider supplies your power, the same kWh can appear twice: once in the utility's delivery charges and once in the provider's generation charges. It is one quantity of electricity. Count it once.
If electricity comes through your lease, ask your landlord for the recharge invoice or the usage on your meter.
2. Gas, propane, heating oil and other heating (Scope 1)
What to read: therms or CCF for natural gas, gallons delivered for propane and heating oil, and usage on any district heating statement.
Where it sits: natural gas usage sits next to the meter reads. For propane and oil, it is on the delivery ticket or invoice.
Watch for: a transportation or delivery charge on a gas bill that repeats the therms. Count it once. Propane and oil arrive in deliveries rather than monthly bills, so log each delivery in the month it arrived and keep every ticket for the year.
3. Fuel receipts and fleet fuel cards (Scope 1)
What to read: gallons of gasoline or diesel.
Where it sits: on each pump receipt. Fleet card statements list gallons per transaction and usually a monthly total.
Watch for: who owns the vehicle. Fuel for company-owned or leased vehicles, generators and on-site equipment is Scope 1. When employees drive their own cars on business and you reimburse them by the mile, that belongs in Scope 3 under business travel. If a receipt shows dollars without gallons, look for the price per gallon on the same receipt.
4. HVAC and refrigeration service records (Scope 1, often missed)
What to read: the refrigerant type (for example R-410A) and the amount added, usually in pounds.
Where it sits: the technician's service invoice or work order, often in the parts or materials lines.
Why it gets missed: it arrives as a service invoice, not a utility bill, so it rarely gets filed with energy records. Refrigerant that has to be topped up has leaked out, and many refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases. Check rooftop units, split systems, walk-in coolers, refrigerated cases and ice machines.
If you make things, the same goes for production equipment: boiler service reports and energy metering for machinery belong with these records.
The next layer: Scope 3
Scope 3 covers your value chain. Some of its documents carry activity data you can work from directly: weight, distance, nights, gallons. Others carry dollars, which means a spend-based estimate. Spend-based estimates are less precise, and CarbonKick labels them as estimates on every report.
- Freight and shipping invoices. Carrier invoices, haulage manifests and 3PL statements. Weight and distance (or origin and destination) give a better number than the invoice total.
- Waste and recycling hauling. Hauler invoices for landfill, recycling, compost and food waste. Look for tons, or container size and pickup frequency.
- Water and sewer bills. Usage in gallons or CCF.
- Business travel. Flight confirmations (origin, destination, cabin class), hotel folios (nights and city), rail and transit receipts, and mileage claims or rental car invoices (miles driven).
- Packaging and purchased goods. Supplier invoices for packaging, ingredients, raw materials and components. Usually spend, sometimes weight.
- Other purchases. Office supplies and equipment, cloud and software invoices, catering, facilities and cleaning contracts, and construction or fit-out work. Mostly spend-based.
- Corporate card statements and expense reports. A catch-all for anything without its own invoice.
- Prior footprint or sustainability reports. Not an emissions source, but useful for comparing one year with another.
How many months do you need?
A full calendar year, January through December, is the cleanest baseline. It captures seasonal swings like summer cooling and winter heating, and it lines up with an annual reporting period.
2026 closes December 31. If you start now, gather January through September and add October, November and December as the bills arrive.
Fewer months are still a useful start. Just label the period your footprint covers.
If a customer asked for your footprint, cover the period they asked for. Here's what to send them.
Tip: utility online accounts usually keep past bills as PDFs. Download the bills themselves.
Missing a month?
Disclose it. Don't guess it.
Note which month is missing and which document it is. Ask the utility or vendor for a copy before you fill anything in.
In CarbonKick, gaps are listed on the report and never filled silently. Extrapolating a missing month is a step you choose, and it is labeled and shown separately from the months you measured.
Checklist
Scope 1 and 2
- 12 months of electric bills (kWh)
- 12 months of natural gas bills (therms or CCF), or every propane or heating oil delivery ticket (gallons)
- Fuel receipts or fleet card statements (gallons)
- HVAC and refrigeration service records showing refrigerant added (type and pounds)
Scope 3
- Freight and shipping invoices
- Waste, recycling and compost hauling invoices
- Water and sewer bills
- Travel: flights, hotels, rail, mileage claims, rental cars
- Supplier invoices for packaging and purchased goods
- Corporate card statements for everything else
Frequently asked questions
Can I calculate a carbon footprint from what I spent on utilities?
You can estimate one, but usage is better. Rates, taxes and fees change what you pay without changing what you used. For electricity, gas and fuel, use kWh, therms and gallons. Keep spend-based estimates for documents that carry no usage, and label them as estimates.
What is a delivery or transportation charge on a utility bill?
It is what the utility charges to move energy to your building over its wires or pipes. On many bills that line lists the same kWh or therms as the energy you used. It is a charge for moving the energy, not more energy, so count the usage once.
My utilities are included in my rent. What do I use?
Ask your landlord for the recharge invoice or the usage for your meter or space. If all you can get is a dollar figure, a spend-based estimate is a reasonable placeholder, labeled as an estimate.
Do I need Scope 3 to calculate a carbon footprint?
No. Scopes 1 and 2 come from a handful of bills, and their numbers come straight from meter readings and fuel receipts, so they are a natural place to begin. Add Scope 3 in layers, starting with the categories you have documents for. Always state which scopes your footprint includes.
Are refrigerant leaks part of a carbon footprint?
Yes. Refrigerant released from air conditioning or refrigeration equipment you control is a direct Scope 1 emission. The record you need is the service invoice showing the refrigerant type and how much was added.
What file formats does CarbonKick accept?
PDF bills and invoices give the most reliable results. CarbonKick also accepts photos or scans (JPG, PNG, HEIC, WEBP, GIF), CSV, TSV, TXT and Excel files, up to 20 MB each. A clear photo of a paper bill works. Word files need to be saved as PDF, and ZIP files unzipped, before upload.
Get your footprint from the bills you already have
Gather what you can find. CarbonKick reads the usage on each document and returns a GHG Protocol-aligned footprint in minutes, with every line labeled measured, calculated or estimated. Send me what you have and I'll run your numbers free and walk you through them.
How CarbonKick calculates: read the methodology →
About the author: Mark Alvarado is an environmental engineer and the founder of CarbonKick. Before building it, he calculated carbon footprints by hand for consumer brands.