01 For US QuickBooks Online and Desktop companies

For US QuickBooks Online and Desktop companies

QuickBooks carbon accounting software for a Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint from your bills and expenses

QuickBooks does not calculate emissions, but it already holds the data a footprint is built from: every vendor bill, expense and utility payment, with a date, an amount and an account. Export a year of paid bills as CSV or XLSX, upload it, and each line is classified to a scope and one of the 15 Scope 3 categories with a stated reason, then kept linked to the original transaction. Plans start at $2,340 a year.

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01 Amazon Web Services Cloud infrastructure, annual $184,000 S3 20,240 kg

02 Con Edison Electricity, 82,400 kWh metered $14,600 S2 31,312 kg

03 Delta Air Lines Team offsite + client flights $32,500 S3 24,375 kg

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This page is for the owner, controller or outsourced bookkeeper of a US company that keeps its books in QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop and has just been asked for a carbon number. The request usually arrives from a larger customer with a supplier questionnaire, a lender, a CDP or EcoVadis request, or a parent company that must report. You do not have a sustainability team and you should not need one. You have a general ledger, and that is enough to start.

Does QuickBooks have carbon accounting?

Not as a built-in feature. QuickBooks records money, not tonnes: a $4,200 electricity bill is a payment to a vendor in the Utilities account, and nothing in the file converts it to kilowatt-hours or CO2e. Carbon software fills that gap from outside. Some vendors list an app in the QuickBooks App Store (Greenly announced one in April 2024), and the rest work from an export. The export route has one advantage: it does not depend on any connector, so it works the same on QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and a ledger you migrated last year.

Three ways a QuickBooks company gets to a carbon number
Route	What you do	Where it breaks down
Spreadsheet by hand	Export bills, tag each vendor to a category, multiply spend by a factor yourself	Hundreds of vendors, no record of why a line got its factor, nothing an auditor or customer can trace. Rebuilt from scratch every year
App Store connector	Connect the app to your QuickBooks company file and let it read transactions	Often a screening estimate from spend only. Check which Scope 3 categories it covers and whether you can see the reason behind each line
Export and classify (CarbonAccounting.ai)	Export paid bills and expenses, upload, confirm the columns once, review the flagged lines	You do one export per year. In return every tonne links back to the invoice line and the reasoning is stored for next year

How do you get a carbon footprint from QuickBooks data?

Run a Transaction Detail by Account report, or the Expenses by Vendor Detail report, for the reporting year. Include date, vendor, account, memo, amount and, if you track it, class or location. Export to Excel and save as CSV. That file is the whole input.

The classification then does three things. It separates Scope 1 (fuel you burn, company vehicles, refrigerants), Scope 2 (purchased electricity and heat, from the utility bills) and Scope 3 (everything else you buy, which for most small and mid-size companies is the bulk of the footprint). It assigns each line one of the 15 Scope 3 categories, for example purchased goods and services, business travel or waste. And it flags the lines it is unsure about, such as a vague memo or a vendor that sells both fuel and snacks, so a person looks at those only. The method behind the spend-based part is in calculating Scope 3 emissions from spend.

What a QuickBooks company usually needs the number for

01 Supplier to a large customer

Customer questionnaire

A retailer or manufacturer asks for your Scope 1 and 2 and sometimes Scope 3. The ledger export answers it, and the answer holds up when they ask how you got it. See software for suppliers.

02 Ratings and disclosure

EcoVadis or CDP

These ask for evidence behind the figure. A trail from tonne to invoice is what scores, not a bare total. See EcoVadis and CDP software.

03 Smaller company, first inventory

Start simple

One entity, one export, a defensible baseline year. If that is you, the simple carbon accounting software page shows what the first report looks like.

What does QuickBooks carbon accounting cost?

The Ledger plan is $2,340 a year and covers Scope 1, 2 and spend-based Scope 3 screening for one company from the AP export, with the mapping kept so next year is a re-run. The Compliance plan is $7,740 a year and adds activity-based factors, supplier data requests and report packs for SB 253, CSRD, CBAM and ISSB. Both are on the pricing page. For comparison, the same inventory done by a consultant is priced per engagement and usually delivered once, with no workspace to re-run; the trade is covered in carbon accounting services vs software.

Questions to ask before you choose a QuickBooks carbon tool

01 Does it work from the QuickBooks export or only a live connection? Desktop users and anyone who closes books in a spreadsheet need the export path.
02 Can I see why each line got its category? A reason and a confidence level per line is what lets a reviewer or customer accept the result.
03 Which emission factors and which year? A US inventory should use EPA factors and eGRID subregions. Ask for the source in writing. The EPA publishes them in its GHG Emission Factors Hub.
04 What happens next year? The mapping should be reused, so a re-run takes an afternoon, not a project.
05 Can it grow into a filing? If a customer or California rule later requires SB 253 or CDP, you want the same data, not a restart.

Companies on other accounting systems should read Xero carbon accounting, Sage carbon accounting, carbon accounting software for NetSuite and Business Central carbon accounting. The full shortlist is on best carbon accounting software, and how the upload and review work is on how it works.

01 Does QuickBooks have carbon accounting?

No. QuickBooks records spend by vendor and account, not energy use or emissions. You add a carbon tool that reads an export of your bills and expenses, or an app from the QuickBooks App Store, and converts the spend into Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

02 How do I calculate carbon emissions from QuickBooks data?

Export a year of paid bills and expenses, classify each line to a scope and Scope 3 category, then apply an emission factor to the spend or, for fuel and electricity, to the quantity on the bill. CarbonAccounting.ai does the classification and keeps the invoice link.

03 Does it work with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop?

Yes. It works from a CSV or XLSX export, so the version does not matter. Run Transaction Detail by Account for the year, export to Excel, and upload the file.

04 What is the best carbon accounting software for QuickBooks users?

It depends on who asks. For a customer questionnaire or a first baseline, an export and classify tool with a visible reason per line is enough. If SB 253, CDP or assurance is coming, choose one that keeps a trail to the source transaction.

05 How much does carbon accounting software for QuickBooks cost?

CarbonAccounting.ai starts at $2,340 a year for Scope 1, 2 and spend-based Scope 3 for one company, and $7,740 a year with SB 253, CSRD, CBAM and ISSB report packs. Pricing is published on the pricing page.

The Greenly QuickBooks App Store listing is from a company announcement dated April 2024. Check any connector's current coverage with the vendor before you buy.

02 Related

Related guides & pages

See your own footprint classified in about a minute.

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