how do I paste the questionnaire I received into esgia

Paste the entire questionnaire, unchanged, all at once

You paste the questionnaire exactly as you received it from your customer, bank or insurer — question by question, in the original text. This can come from a Word document, a PDF, an online form or an email; it doesn't matter what form the list was provided in, as long as the text of the questions themselves comes through as they were asked. No fixed format is needed and no pre-processing: no summarising, no translating into your own words, no pre-selection of "easy" or "difficult" questions. The capcheck works per question, so the more literal the text, the more reliable the assessment of whether a question falls within the standard's scope.

It is not necessary to determine in advance which questions are "important" or which are likely to fall outside the standard — that is precisely what the capcheck assesses per question. Anyone who wonders whether all the questions asked are actually permitted to be asked can also read up on that separately under the topic or can my client ask all the sustainability questions he wants. For anyone who does not yet know exactly what happens after pasting and what the capcheck produces as output, this is described at what exactly is esgia's capcheck.

Why the full text is needed for a proper assessment

The assessment of each question is based on a comparison between what is being asked and what the voluntary EU standard for non-listed small and medium-sized undertakings (VSME, basic module of EFRAG) covers as a topic, supplemented by the chain due diligence requirement from the corporate sustainability reporting directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2464). This comparison concerns the precise wording of a question: for instance, whether scope 1, 2 or 3 emissions are being requested according to the GHG Protocol classification, and whether that falls within the basic module of VSME or outside it. A summarised or reworded question changes that nuance, and with it the outcome of the assessment. That is why the literal text of the questionnaire is the starting point.