Navan carbon emissions reporting software for US business travel and Scope 3 Category 6

The short answer: Navan shows carbon emissions for every flight option at booking, keeps a real-time CO2 dashboard by department and travel mode, and lets admins choose DEFRA, ICAO or TREMOD as the calculation method. That covers travel booked through Navan. A Scope 3 business travel figure for a customer, CDP or SB 253 also needs the trips booked somewhere else and the travel that only shows up as an expense, and it usually has to sit next to Scope 1, Scope 2 and the rest of Scope 3. Most US finance teams combine the Navan report with the expense and AP export in a carbon accounting tool, from $2,340 a year.

This guide is for the controller, travel manager or finance operations lead at a US company that runs Navan for travel, expense or both, and has been handed a request for business travel emissions. It covers what Navan reports, which method to pick, where the Navan number stops, and which software turns the rest into a figure you can defend.

Does Navan track carbon emissions?

Yes. Navan, which was founded in 2015 as TripActions and says it runs travel programs for more than 10,000 companies, began offering opt-in carbon data at the corporate and traveler level in 2019. In 2021 it added a sustainability suite with carbon emission budgets, a real-time CO2 analytics dashboard and an emissions calculator. Travelers see the emissions of each flight option during booking, and admins can see emissions by department, travel mode, traveler, airport, booking or travel date, and region.

Navan also says all sustainability data in the platform can be exported through its API, and it sells two add-on routes for what is left after reduction: Navan Compensate, a carbon credit service run with SQUAKE, and access to sustainable aviation fuel through a partnership with Neste. Neither changes the gross emissions you report, which is worth remembering when someone suggests the credits make the travel line disappear.

What Navan carbon emissions reports cover, and what they leave out

Navan's sustainability material describes emissions calculated for travel booked through Navan. Under the GHG Protocol, Scope 3 Category 6 covers all employee business travel in vehicles the company does not own, however the trip was booked or paid for. The table shows where each piece of a typical US travel program ends up.

Business travel at a Navan company and where each emissions number comes from (October 2026)

Travel or cost	In Navan's travel emissions?	Where the data sits	How to get a number
Flights booked in Navan	Yes, at booking and in the CO2 dashboard	Navan travel reporting or API	Use Navan's figure with one documented method, and check changes and cancellations
Flights booked direct with an airline or through another agency	No	Navan Expense, the corporate card feed or AP	Distance-based if the route is on the receipt, otherwise a spend-based air travel factor
Hotels booked in Navan	Navan's material centers on flights; confirm hotel coverage with your account team	Navan travel reporting	Room nights times a hotel factor; optional in Category 6
Conference hotels booked on an event site	No	Expense report lines	Nights times a hotel factor, or spend-based if nights are missing
Reimbursed personal car mileage	No, it is a claim, not a booking	Navan Expense or your expense tool	Miles times EPA's business travel vehicle factor
Taxis, rideshare and local transit	Generally not	Card and expense lines	Spend-based ground transportation factor
Company-owned or leased vehicles	Not Category 6 at all	Fuel cards and AP	Scope 1 from fuel gallons

How big the gap is depends on policy compliance. A company where almost every flight runs through Navan can use Navan's figure for air travel and fill in the smaller pieces from expenses. A company with field sales, frequent conference travel or a loose booking policy will find a large share of the year only in the expense and card data, and the trick is to count it once. Before you add the two sources together, match the card lines that Navan already booked so the same flight is not in the number twice. If the card feed and the ledger disagree, reconcile the corporate card statement against your books first, so the travel lines you classify are the ones you actually paid.

DEFRA, ICAO or TREMOD in Navan, and which one a US company should pick

Navan lets organizations calculate travel emissions with three recognized methodologies: DEFRA, ICAO and TREMOD. They give different answers for the same trip, so the choice matters less than using one consistently and writing it down.

Travel emissions methods available in Navan

Method	What it is	When it suits a US reporter
DEFRA	The UK government's conversion factors for company reporting, updated each year, with flight factors that can include a radiative forcing uplift	Common in CDP responses and with UK or European parents; state whether the uplift is included
ICAO	The International Civil Aviation Organization's carbon calculator for air travel	Flights only; a neutral aviation-specific choice when air dominates the travel line
TREMOD	A German transport emissions model used for rail and road as well as air	Mostly relevant to European travel; rarely the first choice for a US inventory

Most US inventories use EPA factors elsewhere, so a US reporter usually picks DEFRA or ICAO for Navan bookings and EPA's business travel table for mileage and rental cars, and says so in the methodology note. What breaks an inventory is switching methods between years without restating the base year, or mixing one method for Navan flights with another for expensed flights without noting it. The broader logic of spend and activity methods is in how to calculate Scope 3 emissions from spend.

Which software reports Navan carbon emissions for Scope 3?

There are four realistic routes. The first three measure travel; the last one builds the travel line and the rest of the inventory from what the company paid.

Routes to a business travel emissions number for Navan customers

Route	What it covers	Price
Navan's built-in CO2 reporting	Travel booked in Navan, by department, mode and traveler, exportable by API	Part of Navan; Navan Travel is free for companies with up to 300 employees, larger companies are quoted
A travel emissions specialist	Travel data from one or more booking tools and agencies	Usually quoted
An emission factor API inside your own build	Whatever your team pipes in; see Climatiq alternatives for what that build involves	API access plus engineering time
CarbonAccounting.ai	Every expense, card and AP line, so business travel plus Scope 1, 2 and the rest of Scope 3 in one inventory	Ledger $2,340 a year; Compliance $7,740 a year

Navan's own pricing page says Navan Travel costs companies of up to 300 employees nothing, because travel providers' commission fees fund it, and that Navan Expense is free for the first five monthly expensing users and then $15 per user per month. So the travel emissions dashboard often comes at no extra cost, and that is a good reason to use it. The paid question is what to do with the travel line once you have it. A customer questionnaire or CDP response asks for Scope 1, Scope 2 and the relevant Scope 3 categories together, and at a distributor or manufacturer the purchased goods and services line is many times larger than travel.

Building travel from the Navan and expense exports, and everything else from the AP export, in one tool means one factor set, one review queue and one evidence trail. Our Ledger plan covers one entity with Scope 1, 2 and spend-based Scope 3 screening; Compliance adds activity-based factors, supplier data requests and report packs. Plan details are on our pricing page, and the full Scope 3 picture is on Scope 3 emissions software.

How to get Navan travel and expense data into a carbon inventory

1. Pick the method in Navan and write it down. DEFRA or ICAO for flights, with the factor year, and whether radiative forcing is included.
2. Export Navan travel emissions for the reporting year. Keep booking reference, traveler department, mode, route and the emissions figure.
3. Export expense and card lines for the same year. Expense type, merchant, amount in USD, date, and miles for mileage claims.
4. Remove what Navan already counted. Match card lines for Navan bookings by booking reference or amount and date, and drop them from the expense set.
5. Classify the remainder. Import the expense file; each line comes back with a scope, a Scope 3 category, the factor used, a reason and a confidence score, and unclear merchants land in a review queue.
6. Keep both trails. Navan's export supports the booked travel; the line-level evidence link supports everything else.

Companies on SAP Concur rather than Navan face the same split between booked and expensed travel, covered in Concur CO2 emissions reporting software.

Is business travel required for SB 253 or CDP?

Not in the first SB 253 report, but yes from 2027. SB 253 applies to companies with more than $1 billion in total annual revenue that do business in California, and the first report, due November 10, 2026, covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 only. Scope 3, including business travel, starts with 2027 reporting, which is why companies that file this year are already asking their travel managers for the 2026 data.

CDP asks for the Scope 3 categories that are relevant to your business, and business travel is relevant for almost every office-based company. Customer supplier questionnaires usually want a Scope 3 total with the categories listed and a short methodology note. For the SB 253 requirements and tool checklist, see SB 253 reporting software.

What to ask before you pay for a travel emissions tool

• Does it see travel booked outside Navan? If it reads only booking data, the expensed trips still need a second method.
• Does it de-duplicate booked and expensed trips? Double counting is the most common error in a combined travel number.
• Which method and factor year does it use? DEFRA, ICAO, TREMOD and EPA give different results; the report should name one.
• Can it report the other 14 Scope 3 categories? Travel is one category, and usually not the largest.
• Can an auditor trace a tonne to a transaction? SB 253 limited assurance on Scope 1 and 2 starts with reports filed in 2027, and Scope 3 assurance follows later.

Getting a business travel number from Navan this quarter

For most US Navan customers the quickest defensible route is to take Navan's booked-travel emissions with one documented method, add the expensed travel that Navan did not book, and build the rest of the inventory from the AP export in the same place. Upload a sample expense or AP export in the tool above to see how your lines classify before you buy.