Establishing the exact boundaries of your Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) project is the most critical step before beginning data collection. Properly scoping your perimeter ensures you meet strict European legal requirements, prevents redundant work across subsidiaries, and aligns your final disclosure with the correct corporate level.
Understand CSRD Legal Boundaries
Unlike voluntary frameworks where you can flexibly choose which facilities to include, the CSRD dictates strict rules regarding your reporting perimeter based on corporate structure and the February 2026 Omnibus Directive thresholds.
You must determine whether you are required to report at an individual subsidiary level, or if you must produce a consolidated group-level report.
Individual Reporting: If a specific EU subsidiary independently exceeds the threshold (1, 000 employees AND €450 million in worldwide net turnover), it must typically publish its own CSRD report covering its specific operational boundaries.
Consolidated Group Reporting: If the EU parent company exceeds the thresholds on a consolidated basis (summing the metrics of all its EU subsidiaries), it must publish a single, comprehensive report that encompasses the impacts of the entire group.
The Exemption Rule: If a parent company publishes a fully compliant consolidated CSRD report, its eligible child subsidiaries are generally exempt from having to publish their own individual local reports.
Map Your Organizational Perimeter
Before configuring the platform, you must explicitly define which entities fall inside your consolidated boundary. This mapping ensures that no facility's carbon footprint or social metrics are accidentally excluded from the final audit.
Include All Subsidiaries: If you are publishing a consolidated group report, your reporting perimeter must exactly match the perimeter used for your consolidated financial statements. You cannot exclude a subsidiary from your ESG report if it is included in your financial accounting.
Account for Joint Ventures: You must determine how to report on facilities where you share ownership. Typically, you include their impacts based on your exact percentage of financial control or operational control.
Document in the Onboarding Module: Use the Mapping tab in your Greenly ESG Onboarding Excel file to formally list every subsidiary, business unit, and physical facility that falls within your established legal boundaries.
Leverage the Multi-Entity Architecture
Managing a consolidated CSRD report across dozens of European subsidiaries can create severe data bottlenecks. The Greenly platform utilizes a connected multi-entity architecture to seamlessly manage your complex reporting perimeter.
Instead of emailing spreadsheets to local facility managers, the system mirrors your exact organizational chart within the workspace.
Local Entry: Local Data Owners input their specific facility metrics (e.g., local energy consumption or local headcount) into their designated "child" entity account.
Automated Roll-up: The platform automatically pushes that local data upward through backend consolidation rules. It mathematically sums the quantitative metrics and concatenates the narrative policies into the overarching "parent" entity's CSRD report.
Verify Your CSRD Scope in the Workspace
Once your perimeter is legally defined and mapped by the Greenly team, the Project Manager must verify the workspace hierarchy before delegating tasks.
Navigate to the ESG Data menu in the main left-hand sidebar.
Click on the Data collection tab.
Locate the Entities drop-down menu situated in the top filter bar.
Click the menu to visually verify your corporate structure. Ensure that the parent group is at the top, with all relevant EU subsidiaries correctly nested beneath it.
Select your designated reporting level (either the parent group or a specific eligible subsidiary).
Click the Frameworks drop-down menu and activate the CSRD tag to isolate the specific indicators required for that established perimeter.
Warning: If an applicable facility or subsidiary is missing from your Entities drop-down list, the automated consolidation engine cannot pull its data into your final CSRD report, resulting in a severe compliance gap. Contact your Greenly representative immediately to adjust your workspace hierarchy.