5 Signs Your Sustainability Program Has Outgrown Spreadsheets

Organizations today face a growing imperative to manage and report on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance — key to sustainability initiatives — with greater accuracy, transparency and speed. Regulatory frameworks like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), California’s SB 253, SB 261 and SB 219, and International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)-aligned regulations are raising the bar for data quality and auditability. At the same time, stakeholders, including investors and customers, are demanding more credible, comparable and timely disclosures.

Yet many sustainability teams are still relying on spreadsheets to manage sustainability and ESG data. While spreadsheets may have worked in the early stages of sustainability management maturity, they were never designed to support the scale, complexity and data auditability requirements of today’s reporting landscape.

Here are five signs your organization has outgrown spreadsheets — and how UL Solutions’ ULTRUS™ UL 360 software platform can help you move forward with confidence.

1. You’re struggling to prove data integrity.

The challenge: When sustainability data is scattered across spreadsheets, it’s difficult to track who entered what, when or why. There’s no built-in version control, no audit trail and no easy way to safeguard that the data hasn’t been altered — intentionally or accidentally. This lack of transparency presents significant challenges when preparing for third-party verification or responding to regulatory scrutiny.

How ULTRUS™ UL 360 software helps solve it: ULTRUS™ UL 360 software embeds auditability into every layer of the platform. Each data point is time-stamped, source-linked and change-tracked, with a full audit log accessible to users and external auditors. Role-based permissions help verify that only authorized users can access or modify data. By reducing the time and effort required to validate sustainability data, organizations can significantly lower the cost of external audits and streamline third-party verification processes.

2. Regulatory reporting feels like a fire drill.

The challenge: Every new regulation brings a new scramble. Teams must interpret evolving disclosure rules, reformat data and manually compile reports — often under tight deadlines. This reactive approach is not only inefficient, but it also increases the risk of errors and inconsistencies that can undermine credibility with regulators and stakeholders.

How ULTRUS™ UL 360 software helps solve it: UL 360 software offers a preconfigured ESG Disclosures module with features and content aligned with the CSRD, the ISSB, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and CDP. The UL 360 software’s ESG Disclosures module provides a centralized workspace for managing qualitative and quantitative data, assigning questions to subject matter experts, and tracking progress through configurable workflows. Built-in guidance and conditional logic help improve completeness and accuracy. When frameworks evolve, ULTRUS™ UL 360 software updates accordingly — so your reporting stays aligned and audit-ready.

3. Scope 3 emissions are a blind spot.

The challenge: Scope 3 emissions — those generated across your value chain — often account for more than 70% of a company’s total emissions.* Yet collecting and managing Scope 3 data is one of the most complex and resource-intensive aspects of sustainability and ESG reporting. These emissions originate from a wide range of upstream and downstream activities, often outside the organization’s direct control. Data is typically fragmented, inconsistent and difficult to verify — especially when relying on spreadsheets. As regulatory pressure mounts and third-party verification becomes mandatory in jurisdictions across the world, organizations need a scalable, auditable way to manage Scope 3 complexity.

How ULTRUS UL 360 software helps solve it: ULTRUS UL 360 software simplifies Scope 3 reporting by offering full coverage of all 15 Scope 3 categories, over 120,000 emission factors that are updated within 10 days of release, full alignment to the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol, and tools to manage the complexity of value chain emissions.

For example, our software helps you manage Scope 3 Category 1 emissions data through the Purchased Goods and Services module by integrating with procurement systems to retrieve the relevant purchase records, selecting the best available emission factor for each transaction from your hierarchy of spend-based to product-specific factors, and using those factors and purchase data to calculate your overall Scope 3 Category 1 emissions.

UL 360 goes beyond just calculation; it highlights emissions hot spots and opportunities for improvement and offers advanced visualization and reporting tools for clarity.

4. Reporting cycles are slowing you down.

The challenge: Manual sustainability and ESG reporting are a significant drain on time and resources. Teams often spend weeks chasing down data, validating inputs and formatting reports — only to produce static snapshots that can be outdated by the time they’re published. This inefficiency hampers decision-making and limits the strategic value of sustainability insights.

How ULTRUS™ UL 360 software helps solve it: UL 360 software elevates your sustainability and ESG reporting through automation, intelligent data architecture and dynamic reporting tools. The platform supports:

• Automated data acquisition from internal systems (e.g., human resources, enterprise resource planning, building management) and external sources (e.g., suppliers, utility providers) via APIs, Excel imports and mobile apps
• Templated reporting tools that allow users to design branded Word or PowerPoint reports dynamically linked to live data, charts and dashboards — eliminating the need for manual formatting
• Real-time dashboards and role-based visualizations that provide instant insights relevant to each user’s needs across business units, geographies and reporting periods
• Flexible export options to third-party business intelligence tools like Power BI and SharePoint, enabling seamless integration with broader analytics ecosystems

With ULTRUS™ UL 360 software, sustainability teams can shift from reactive reporting to proactive performance management — reducing reporting cycles, improving data confidence and unlocking strategic value.

5. You’re focused on compliance, but need to build resilience.

The challenge: Spreadsheets are built for static reporting, not strategic planning. They don’t support forecasting, scenario modeling or performance benchmarking — capabilities that are essential for building a resilient, future-ready sustainability and ESG program. Without these tools, sustainability efforts risk remaining reactive and disconnected from broader business strategy.

How ULTRUS™ UL 360 software helps solve it: ULTRUS™ UL 360 software empowers organizations to move beyond compliance. The platform includes a built-in target planning feature for setting and tracking net-zero goals, scenario planning tools for modeling future emissions, and benchmarking dashboards to compare performance across sites and suppliers. The optional add-on, UL 360 software’s Initiatives module, allows users to document and evaluate proposed sustainability projects and track their impact over time. Dedicated supply chain capabilities enable direct supplier engagement through surveys, data collection forms and document uploads — supporting multitiered data collection and audit tracking.

The path forward

If your sustainability program is constrained by manual tools, now is the time to evolve. ULTRUS™ UL 360 software is designed for enterprise organizations with complex sustainability needs. It offers a fully configurable platform for sustainability and ESG data management, including carbon measurement, Scope 3 reporting, regulatory disclosures and performance tracking. Backed by decades of experience, UL 360 software is trusted by global organizations to streamline sustainability reporting, improve data quality and support long-term sustainability goals.

* Verdantix (2024). Scope 3 Measurement: Mastering Emissions Reduction Strategies for Net Zero Success (Webinar).