What the bank or a large customer will ask

4 min read · Updated 23 settembre 2026

Small companies almost never start reporting on their own. The trigger is an e-mail: the bank before renewing a loan, a large customer before a tender, an insurer, sometimes a public call. Attached is a spreadsheet with a few dozen questions and a deadline that is always too short.

What they ask

• Basic company data: registration number, activity, headcount, revenue, sites. That is disclosure B1 of VSME, and it is the same in every questionnaire.
• Energy use and emissions: how much electricity, gas and fuel you used, and what that means in emissions. This is where most companies stop, because the data exists on invoices and nowhere as one list.
• People and safety: employees by contract type, accidents at work, training.
• Conduct: the policies you have written down, and how you handle risk in the supply chain.

Why they ask

Not because they want your opinion of your own sustainability. The bank and the large customer report under their own rules and need numbers from suppliers to produce that report at all. So the questions are about data, not intentions — which is why «we are working on it» is not an answer.

What to prepare in advance

• One place for the data. Energy, fuel and service invoices collected by period, not by folder in an inbox.
• Scope 1 and 2 already calculated for the last closed year, with the factors you used stated.
• Evidence next to the figures. Every number needs a source you can show without half a day of searching.
• Company basics that nobody has to copy out of the register again each time.

How to answer faster

A VSME report is not a literal answer to a questionnaire, but it is the source the answers are copied from without guesswork. Once the data exists in one shape, the difference between «two weeks of panic» and «one afternoon» is exactly whether it has to be collected or only transferred.

One practical thing more: ask for the deadline, and ask which version of the questionnaire is the current one. Companies regularly fill in a form the sender has already replaced.