News
systems@work Launches a Carbon Footprint Module To Calculate Employee CO2 Emissions
By systems@work
29. May 2007 - 2:39:16 PM

Software solutions provider systems@work has implemented a new Carbon Footprint module in their flagship products time@work and expense@work. The new module allows the CO2 to be calculated for each individual employee, so when an employee fills in an expense claim form the software calculates and displays the amount of CO2 that each claim generates. For example when inputting a flight the system will ask the employee if the flight is short haul or long haul and will calculate the employees Carbon Footprint based on the amount of miles travelled by aeroplane.
 
Michael Sheehan, managing director of systems@work, said, “Our flagship products expense@work and time@work enable organisations to track employee and project related costs. Organisations throughout the world already use our solutions to calculate fees, costs and other expenses and this enables them to see the miles travelled and the number of flights, taxis or trains taken by staff. With the release of the Carbon Footprint module we are now giving our clients the ability to calculate the CO2 emissions for employees each month.”
 
Sheehan continues, ”Our research showed that there are a number of blunt Carbon Footprint Calculator tools available via the internet but our new module is far more granular and tracks the actual employee’s miles to generate a score as well as factoring in the type of vehicle when calculating carbon emissions.”
 
When inputting mileage travelled by car into an expense sheet the Carbon Footprint module tracks the type of car used. Generally with carbon emissions there are four classes of car: large vehicles such as Range Rovers, medium size cars such as a Ford Mondeo, small cars such as a Mini Cooper and hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius and other electric cars. Depending on the class of car and the number of miles travelled the system will calculate a score which is displayed on the expense form itself. The score will increase when more travel is entered as an expense and a value is calculated at the bottom of the form.
 
In the system there is the possibility for the employee to see their Carbon Footprint value at any point during the month or year and it can be viewed by month or by week indicating how much CO2 they have generated. Administrators, Managers, the HR department, or whoever is given permission, can run reports which show a league table of the best or worst offenders or the best or worst conservationists in the company depending on the way in which they wish to monitor and score staff.
 
Sheehan concludes, “Although software cannot save the environment by itself Behavioural scientists believe that feedback loops, which in this context are a CO2 score next to each employees expense claim, have a significant influence on behaviour. With increased pressure from Government organisations such as Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition and with the recent European Parliament resolution entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility: a new partnership”, it is vital that organisations take their environmental reporting obligations seriously.”

ENDS
About systems@work
systems@work designs, develops and implements software solutions for accountants, lawyers, engineers, architects, IT services, consultants and other professional services organisations. Covering time recording, expense management, billing, reporting and resource planning, time@work and expense@work are highly configurable, easily deployed systems for a wide variety of small to large services organisations, whether local, national or international.

time@work provides service organisations with the tools, data and processes needed to run a successful, efficient and profitable business. time@work provides: faster billing, deeper analysis, multi currency, multi-language and multi-company capability.

expense@work is the solution for the management of employee expenses. expense@work accepts credit card feeds and interfaces directly with finance systems to avoid the time consuming and error prone re-keying of data. Most organisations have hundreds of thousands of personal expenses every month, whether they’re petty cash, expense returns or credit card transactions. For further information please visit www.systemsatwork.co.uk  

For further information, please contact:
Nick Bolshaw / Laura Munns
The itpr Partnership
t: +44 (0)1932 578800
f. +44 (0)1932 578801
nickb@itpr.co.uk
www.itpr.co.uk