Template Completion Best Practices
Maintaining data accuracy and applying consistent naming practices for activities ensures that potential emission factors can be matched more effectively. This also helps keep reports clear, accurate, and easy to interpret, making emission results straightforward to understand. Good data management and clean naming conventions further support the generation of accurate potential emission factor matches and reduction suggestions. See Analysis and Reporting.
Common Data Types:
Energy Consumption: Electricity, natural gas, fuel usage
Transportation: Vehicle miles, fuel consumption, shipping data
Waste: Volume, weight, disposal methods
Materials: Purchased goods, packaging, raw materials
Top 3 principle of filling template:
✅ Carefully read the instructions provided in each column.
✅ Complete all mandatory fields (highlighted in purple), except in cases where the column instructions specify otherwise.
✅ Select options only from the available dropdown lists, and do not manually alter the values in these fields.
Data Accuracy Guidelines:
Reliable, high-quality data is required to ensure emissions are calculated accurately, reports are trustworthy, and decarbonization plans are effective. Data errors will result in using incorrect emission factors. This leads to inaccurate emissions accounting, and ultimately, poor strategy decisions.
Here are high-level ‘rule of thumb’ guidelines;
| Dos | Don’ts |
Accuracy |
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Completeness |
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Consistency |
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Transparency |
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Date |
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Valid Value Guidelines for Terrascope Data Templates
Terrascope templates include dropdown columns with specific valid values. When preparing data for entry, always use the valid values from the start. The Terrascope team will provide an Excel reference file listing all valid values for each scope.
If an invalid value is entered, the platform will typically identify the issue, allowing for correction during the upload process.
Naming Convention Guideline for Business Activity Data
Apply standard naming conventions to ensure activity data is organized and emission factors are matched consistently. Use clearly defined categories such as product type, process, or packaging, and harmonize subcategories for all data entries. For example:
Standardize product names and group similar activities:
"Abamectina" or "Abamectina + Bifentrina" should be entered as "PESTICIDE – Abamectin."
Fruit categories like "CITRUS – MANDARIN" or "Fruits – Mandarinas" are unified as "FRUIT – CITRUS – Mandarins."
Packaging descriptions are formatted as "PACKAGING – LABELS – xxx adhesives"
Quality Assurance Checklist:
All required fields completed
Activity amount verified
Units match template specifications
Dates fall within measurement year
Source documentation available
🚧 Avoid common errors:
✅ Ensure all dates are entered in the yyyy-mm-dd format
Verify that the Start Date is the same as or earlier than the End Date for every record.
Be aware that entering dates in a different format, such as yyyy-dd-mm, may result in dates being misinterpreted. For example, March 12, 2025 should be written as 2025-03-12; if entered as 2025-12-03, it will be read as December 3, 2025.
❌ Validating Activity End-Dates: Preventing Future Date Errors
If a future date is entered as the end-date for activities, the system detects this as a data error during the Data Validation stage and provides a clear explanation of the issue. For instance, when uploading data in November 2025, activities should not have an end-date later than the date of uploading data. End-dates in December 2025 will be flagged for correction in this case.
Scope/Category-Specific Template Watch-outs
3.4 Upstream Transportation and 3.9 Downstream Transportation
Upstream and Downstream Transportation templates, when an origin location and a destination location are provided, the distance in [km] is automatically calculated. You can still provide a more accurate distance if that information is available. Please read the instructions in each column carefully before skipping any fields, especially those highlighted in purple, which generally indicate mandatory fields except in specific cases like this.
Custom fields on measurement template
Users and data custodians can add additional information by creating extra columns in measurement templates. There are a few rules to follow;
Extra columns are limited to 10 per template
Each cell supports up to 255 characters of input
Extra columns can be inserted either after existing columns or between existing columns
In the example shown, an extra column D “Custom between lines” is inserted between the Business unit and Site tag columns (which exist on the template by default), and column T “Custom 1 logistics” and column U “Custom 2 cooking” are added at the end of the template. The column names and their values are then displayed in the Activity Detail panel.
How it works after upload the template:
Information entered in these extra columns appears in the Activity Detail side panel under Optional fields, alongside the existing optional inputs, and you can also filter activities by these custom fields.
