What to know about Scoping: Customizing your Assessment

Modified on Thu, 11 Sep at 11:53 AM

The B Impact Self-Assessment is tailored to the size, sector/industry and location of your company. 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 business 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).

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:

Worker type	B Lab’s definition
Full time workers	Payrolled workers that work greater than or equal to 35 hours a week (including staff outsourced through an Employer of Record).
Part-time workers	Payrolled workers that work less than or equal to 34 hours a week (including staff outsourced through an Employer of Record).
Independent Contractors	Self-employed individuals who are contracted by your company on a time-bound or project basis and are not on payroll of a staffing agency.
Temporary 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.

To learn more about how the size of your workforce is calculated on a FTE basis, see Calculating Your Full-time Equivalency (FTE) Workforce.

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 employee count, either as part time (20-34 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. The 0 worker track does not include a Worker section of the B Impact Self Assessment because your company has no additional workers, and instead the assessment focuses on other aspects of your company’s operations and impact.

Determining the market

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.

Selecting the 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 manufactures more than 10% of its own products for sale, or manufactures products to be sold by another company or brand (e.g. contract manufacturers, assembly lines, breweries, livestock producers).
Wholesale/Retail: A company that sells physical products and does not own or operate the manufacturing processes or facilities responsible for the creation of those physical goods (e.g. grocery stores, e-commerce retailers, 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 through the provision of non-physical services. The company does not sell a physical product or does not own/operate a retail, wholesale, or manufacturing facility. (e.g. law firms, marketing/communications agencies, software companies).
Services with Significant Footprint: A company that earns 90% or more of its revenue through the service industry with a significant environmental footprint due to its facilities, supply chain, or the intensity of its operations in delivery of services (e.g. hotels, restaurants, landscaping companies, universities).
Agriculture/Growers: A company that operates a farm, agro-processing facility, or sources crops directly from farmer-growers for a majority of raw input materials. If your company is a livestock producer, please select “Manufacturing” (e.g. fruit or vegetable farms, farmers' markets, coffee plantations, coffee roasters).

Your company's industry, as indicated during the company registration, does not affect the questions in your customized B Impact Self Assessment. If you think that your sector classification does not match your business, please reach out to our team through the Support Portal.