Overview
The Product & Raw Material Inventory module (also called Product Purchase) is a physical, mass-based approach to Scope 3 purchased goods. It covers manufactured products and raw materials, with machine-learning-assisted categorization and analyst validation. It is available as an End-to-End module.
Key use cases
Quantifying purchased goods more precisely than a monetary approach when physical data is available
Categorizing at scale with ML-assisted matching plus validation
Producing breakdowns by material, family and supplier for reduction planning
What this module covers
The module covers purchases of manufactured products and raw materials, using physical data (main material, weight, quantity). Optional fields such as supplier, purchase date, country, price and currency, recycled content and entity or business unit enable breakdowns, supplier engagement and double-counting checks.
Out of scope: transport (handled in Freight), end-of-life (handled in Waste), and cases with no physical data (use the Expense module instead). The module is built around mass, so units other than mass are out of scope.
How the module works
As an End-to-End module, the flow has four steps:
Import: the user uploads the raw data (CSV or XLSX).
AI ingestion and auto-categorization: the ML engine categorizes items and assigns the most relevant emission factor.
Manual verification: the user reviews the suggestions until 95% of total weight is validated. Three actions are available per item: validate the suggested EF, categorize (select a new EF from the dropdown), or flag missing (when no suitable EF exists, which routes the item to a climate expert to source one).
Double counting: the user reviews overlaps with financial purchases (Expense) to avoid double counting.
How emission factors are matched
The approach is activity-based: emissions equal mass multiplied by the emission factor, with different rules for raw materials and manufactured products.
Raw materials: emissions = total weight (kg) x EF (kgCO2e per kg)
Manufactured products: the EF of the product's main raw material is used as a proxy and increased by 20% (a 1.2 factor) to account for transforming the raw material into the finished product. The 20% median comes from several thousand product life-cycle assessments. Some EFs are flagged as finished-product EFs, where the 1.2 factor is not applied.
Total weight is quantity multiplied by unitary weight. If the system cannot confidently match an emission factor, the item moves to manual categorization or override.
Emission factor sources
The default EF set is largely based on Ecoinvent datasets for raw materials, with additional references managed by Research & Methodology. Auto-categorization currently draws on a limited set of emission factors rather than the full Ecoinvent database; analysts can manually select from the extended list when needed.
FAQs
When should I use this module rather than the Expense module?
Use this module when physical data (main material, weight, quantity) is available. When only financial data exists, use the Expense module instead.
What is the transformation penalty?
For manufactured products, the main raw material EF is used as a proxy and increased by 20% to reflect the transformation into a finished product. It is not applied to EFs already flagged as finished-product EFs.
What happens if no emission factor matches an item?
The user flags it as missing, which routes the item to a climate expert who sources a matching emission factor.