You've just finished your first ESG questionnaire. You've found the energy bill, added up the fuel receipts, someone from HR has gone through the payroll records. It took days. And then, a few months later, comes the questionnaire from the bank, or from a second customer — and the question is: does this have to start all over again?
The answer lies in what was built after that first time: a file. This is not a new form per questionnaire, but a fixed place where the figures you've already confirmed are stored — energy consumption, fuel, personnel data — linked to the source they come from. A second questionnaire then becomes largely a matter of recognizing which question belongs to which figure, and providing that figure again. No new search through the folder with invoices.
What's in a file
A file is the sum of what you've already submitted and confirmed earlier: the energy consumption from your annual bill, the fuel purchases from your receipts, the number of employees and hours worked from the payroll records. There's no interpretation in it that you haven't approved yourself — you read the figures from your own documents, and the platform remembers which figure belonged to which question. how the connection between your documents and the questionnaire is established you can read on the page that explains that step by step.
The point of a file is not that it takes work off your hands when reading your own records — that remains your responsibility — but that it doesn't make you do that work twice. A bank often asks something slightly different from a large customer, and that customer again differently from an insurer when renewing the policy. But behind those different phrasings often lies the same underlying figure: how much gas, how much diesel, how many employees. You only need to find that figure once.
Why the second time really goes faster
With a second questionnaire, the platform does two things that weren't possible the first time. It recognizes which questions have already been answered with a figure from your file, and it lets you confirm that figure instead of entering it again. What's left is what's truly new: a question the first customer didn't ask, or a period that wasn't yet in the file because the latest energy bill hadn't arrived.
That saves not only time. It also reduces the chance that you enter a slightly different number in the second questionnaire than in the first, simply because you did the calculation again from scratch. One source, multiple customers — that's exactly why companies that receive one questionnaire per year get relatively little benefit from it, and companies that get requests from multiple sides (customer, bank, insurer) notice the difference most clearly.
What changes when the standard changes
The VSME standard and the underlying emission factors are not fixed forever; they are updated at set times. A file is then useful for another reason: if an update affects figures already in your file, you don't have to keep track of that yourself. With a subscription you get notified of this; without a subscription the file itself remains unchanged, but you miss the signal that something has changed.
What the file is not
A file is not an audit and not an assurance engagement, and the confirmation you give for a figure is not a certification mark — for these SME sustainability reports, there is currently no recognised body, not even for esgia. The file records what you yourself extracted and confirmed from your own documents; the platform does not calculate beyond those documents and makes no statement on your behalf about whether you meet an obligation. For the question of whether your situation falls under a particular rule, the official text of the standard is authoritative, and in case of doubt, a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority.
Do you want to see what that means in practice before you record anything? Try the free quick-scan of a few questions, check the knowledge base by topic, or read up on the frequently asked questions page what a file can and cannot do for you.