Templates and records · ISO 14064 · Clause 5.1

ISO 14064-1 organisational boundaries template

Which companies, sites and facilities are included in the organisation’s carbon footprint, and the rule used to add up their emissions.

In one sentence

The organisational boundaries definition sets the approach used to consolidate emissions —financial control, operational control or equity share— and the list of facilities included, because ISO 14064-1 requires those boundaries to be established, the approach to be applied consistently and the choice to be documented (5.1).

Content reviewed on 17 October 2026

Where the standard requires it: ISO 14064 · Clause 5.1 Clauses are cited using the numbering of ISO 14064-1:2018, the current edition for organisation-level inventories. Verification is governed by ISO 14064-3:2019.
Type of information: Mandatory document Documented information to be maintained (5.1)
Who fills it in: Footprint lead together with finance Whoever knows the corporate structure and the lease agreements
When: When preparing the first inventory and whenever the corporate structure changes Acquisitions, disposals, new sites or changes of contract
How long it is kept: Set by the organisation The standard requires procedures for retaining documents and records (8.2) but sets no period. Keep everything from the base year onwards, since a recalculation may mean going back to the original data.

What the standard requires

What ISO 14064 demands and what it leaves to your judgement

The standard asks you to decide how facility emissions are consolidated: by control —financial or operational— or by equity share. The approach is chosen once and applied across the whole inventory; changing it means revisiting the base year.

In practice the outcome is a list of facilities and activities with the percentage of emissions attributed to the organisation. Any facility left out is justified.

Everything else rests on it: if a subsidiary or a leased warehouse is left out without explanation, the verifier will flag it before any calculation error.

Read it in context: Organizational and operational boundaries, in the ISO 14064 Academy

Structure

Fields the template should include

Consolidation approach chosen and rationale
Group companies and percentage of ownership or control
Facilities and activities included
Exclusions and their justification
Special cases: leased assets, joint ventures, franchises
Approval date and version

Example

Example: logistics operator with three warehouses (fictitious company)

Company, people and figures are fictitious: the example only shows what a properly completed record looks like.

Field	Content
Organisation	Navarro Brothers Logistics Ltd (fictitious) · 320 staff · 2025 inventory
Approach	Operational control: the company runs the operations of all its sites, owned or leased
Included at 100 %	Zaragoza, Pamplona and Logroño warehouses · own fleet of 58 lorries · head office
Special case	Leased Logroño warehouse: included because the company controls its operations
Excluded	25 % stake in a freight cooperative with no operational control; its emissions are not attributed
Approval	Managing director · 10 February 2026 · version 2

At the audit

Mistakes auditors commonly flag

The chosen approach is not documented and criteria get mixed across subsidiaries.
Leased facilities excluded without justification.
A company acquisition or disposal that is not reflected in the boundaries or the base year.
The list of facilities does not match the one in the accounts or the management system.

In Kimobox

How this record is kept in Kimobox

1The chosen consolidation approach is kept as a controlled document.
2The list of facilities and activities included in the inventory is recorded.
3Organisational boundaries are reviewed whenever the corporate structure changes.
4Each emission source is linked to the process or facility that generates it.

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before getting started

Which approach should we choose?

It depends on what the inventory is for. Operational control is the most common because it matches what the company can actually manage; equity share is used when the aim is to reflect economic exposure, for instance in groups with many minority holdings.

Can the approach be changed?

Yes, but it is a change of methodology that requires the base year to be revisited so that year-on-year comparisons still make sense, and it must be explained in the report.

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Sources

Where each figure comes from

References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.

ISO 14064-1:2018 — Greenhouse gases. Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals ISO · 2018 ed.
Greenhouse Gas Protocol — Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard WRI and WBCSD · Revised edition