What to know about Scoping: Customizing your Assessment

The B Impact Assessment (BIA) is tailored to the size, sector/industry and location of your company. The Certification setup page requires the company user to complete Section 3 Scoping: Related entities before customizing their assessment.

This article will explain how to complete the Customizing your assessment section successfully to receive an accurate assessment track for your company. 

Understanding the fiscal year information

Companies are required to provide details of the most recently completed fiscal year because several questions in the BIA refer to the fiscal year for reporting outcomes. Your company's revenue is based on the fiscal year, a 12-month accounting period that is used for financial and tax reporting purposes. 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. 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 in the setup experience, you can add or edit your fiscal year information  in the Scoping: Customize your assessment section.

Understanding the Business Size

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: 
Full time workers

Part time workers

Temporary workers

Independent Contractors who are employed for at least 6 months*

Definitions are provided for each worker category in the Scoping: Customize your assessment section.  

Companies must accurately report workers for each worker category to ensure the assessment setup process calculates the correct full-time equivalency value.

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

Some things to consider:

*If the company has individual independent contractors who work greater than 6 months for the 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 track size should be 0. This means there needs to be at least 1 FTE on payroll beyond the working owners/founders to move from the 0 to 1-9 track. The 0 worker track does not include a Worker section of the B Impact 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

A 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 can be applicable to your company. This will be 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. 

Here is an overview of the sectors your company might be classified into according to your responses in this section:

• 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 Environmental 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 Environmental 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).

The company's industry, as indicated during the company registration, does not affect the questions in your customized B Impact Assessment.