What to know about Scoping: Customizing your Assessment

Modified on Thu, 13 Nov at 3:33 PM

The B Impact Self-Assessment is tailored to the size, sector, industry, and location of your company. The location no longer determines sub-requirements, but it does qualify companies for the equity mechanism.

The Scoping: Customize your assessment section of the Certification setup on B Impact asks questions about your company to determine the right track for your assessment.

This article explains how to complete the Scoping: Customize your assessment section to receive an accurate assessment track for your company.

Understanding the fiscal year information

Your company's revenue is based on the fiscal year, a 12-month accounting period that is used for financial and tax reporting purposes. Companies are asked to provide details of the most recently completed fiscal year because several questions in the B Impact Self Assessment refer to the fiscal year for reporting outcomes. The fiscal year period will be used for all financial questions in the assessment that refer to the “last fiscal year.” Companies must also choose a reporting date within six months of the current date at the time of completing the assessment.This date is used as a reference for questions related to the company's worker numbers.

To learn more about fiscal year information and the reporting date, check out our guide on What Time Period To Use When Completing the B Impact Assessment.

If you are on the Certification setup page, you can add or edit your fiscal year information in the Scoping: Customize your assessment section.

Understanding the company size

In B Lab’s new standards (V2.1), size is determined based on the number of workers as well as the revenue of the company in U.S. dollars (USD). Whichever has a lower value is the default size designation. Please note, this change is effective November 2025.

Worker size is determined by Full-Time Equivalency (FTE), a measure of the work done by the company’s entire workforce as if they were all full-time employees. This standardized approach allows for a fair comparison across different types of workers, ensuring equitable consideration for each one. The calculation is based on the following type of workers, if the company has them:

Term	B Lab’s definition
Worker	A person who works for the company as any of the following. An employee An independent contractor, if they work more than 20 hours per week indefinitely or for more than six months. An agency worker, if they work more than 20 hours per week indefinitely or for more than six months. Interns and apprentices, as defined in the B Lab Standard, do not count as workers. Working owners are counted as workers under the standards, but are not counted in FTE calculations.
Employees	Person who has a direct employment relationship with the company. This includes permanent, temporary, full-time, part-time, seasonal, and casual employees. This includes when, for administrative reasons, there is a different employer on record, but practically the person works as an employee and the company is responsible for their recruitment, performance evaluation, and disciplinary management. If a working owner is payrolled and they have additional non-working owner employees, then the working owner is considered an “employee”. However, working owners are always excluded from FTE calculations.
Independent Contractors	A person who is self-employed, or works freelance. They are a “worker” if they work more than 20 hours per week indefinitely or for more than six months. This may include the following examples. A self-employed construction worker who works full-time for the company on a construction project for one year. A freelance physiotherapist who works 25 hours per week at a clinic for two years.
Agency workers	Payrolled workers that are on short-term contracts between 2-5 months.

The B Impact platform automatically calculates your company’s full-time equivalency value based on the numbers reported in each worker category.

Some things to consider:

*If your company has individual independent contractors who work greater than 6 months for your company, they would be considered part of the worker count, either as part time (less than 35 hours a week) or full time (35 hours or more a week).

If your company’s workers consist only of founders or partners who own 10%+ of your company, then your company’s worker size should be 0 (or Company without workers). Companies without workers are exempt from the requirements in the Fair Work impact topic.

Company location

A company does not see different requirements in their assessment as a consequence of location, but the location will drive the equity mechanism which provides companies the ability to opt out of a proportion of applicable and eligible sub-requirements.

Your company’s location determines its market. The market is a crucial part of the assessment track because it determines the questions that are most relevant for your company based on its location and operations. To establish the market, simply input the company’s country of operations. The country of operations is based on the location of the majority of your company's workers. If your company has workers across multiple countries, please use the country with the largest number of employees.

If the company has a virtual office and there are no locations with a majority of employees, please include the country of incorporation and continue filling out the assessment.

Company sector

There are five different sectors that your company can fall under. This is determined through a series of questions in the Scoping: Customize your assessment section. The questions are dynamic and interdependent, which means more questions can show up depending on responses to previous questions. On average, there are six to eight questions in this section.

While your responses to the questions in this section will automatically classify your company into the appropriate sector, possible sector outcomes include:

Manufacturing: A company that earns over 10% of its revenue from products it makes, either for direct sale or for sale by another company or brand. Manufacturing involves transforming input materials into a new product. The manufactured product may not be the final product. (e.g. food and beverage producers, assembly lines, apparel manufacturers).
Wholesale/Retail: A company that earns over 10% of its revenue from selling physical products, but does not own or operate the manufacturing processes or facilities that produce them. This includes companies that design products but outsource their production. (e.g. grocery stores, consumer goods companies that do not manufacture their own product, wholesalers of physical goods).
Services with Minor Footprint: A company that earns 90% or more of its revenue from services that do not involve selling physical products nor require a physical location for their delivery. (e.g. law firms, marketing & communications agencies, software companies).
Services with Significant Footprint: A company that earns 90% or more of its revenue from services that involve significant machinery or equipment, or require a specific operational location (often key to delivering the service). (e.g. hotels, restaurants, landscaping companies, universities).
Agriculture/Growers: A company that either:
- earns over 10% of its revenue from products grown on its farm or agro-processing facility, from managing land to grow and harvest crops, or from raising and managing livestock
- sources the majority of its raw materials directly from growers or livestock producers.

(e.g. vegetable farms, coffee plantations or roasters, tree planting companies, livestock farms or ranches.). Note: Livestock farms were included in the Manufacturing sector under V1.6 of the B Lab Standards, but now are included under the Agriculture/Growers sector.

Company Industry

While there are no standards addenda linked to a company’s industry selection in V2.1 of the B Lab Standards (like it was in V1.6), companies in a handful of industries will see a couple of requirements different from the rest. If you think that your sector classification does not match your business, please reach out to our team through the Support Portal.