How your boundary answers become data tasks
Last updated: 18 August 2026
When you set up your emissions boundary, NetNada asks a series of yes/no questions about your operations. Those answers do more than describe your business — they drive the whole data-collection workflow. Understanding this loop explains why your Emissions Task Manager looks the way it does, and what to do when your operations change.
The core loop
The journey from boundary setup to a finished report follows four steps:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. You answer boundary questions | Simple yes/no questions about your operations — do you have company vehicles, do you purchase electricity, do you generate waste, do you have franchises? |
| 2. Each 'yes' switches on categories | Every question is linked to one or more GHG categories. Answering yes marks those categories as included in your boundary for the reporting period; answering no excludes them. |
| 3. Categories generate tasks | Each included category creates a data-collection task — with a name, a description of what to gather, and instructions on good data sources — for every location included in your boundary. |
| 4. Completed tasks feed your results | As data is uploaded against each task, emissions are calculated and flow through to your dashboards and reports. |
A worked example: company vehicles
Suppose your organisation has three facilities — a Sydney office, a Melbourne warehouse and a Brisbane depot — and during boundary setup you answer yes to "Does your organisation own or control vehicles?"
- The category switches on — the Company Vehicles category (Scope 1 mobile combustion) is included in your boundary for the reporting period.
- Tasks are generated per location — a Company Vehicles task appears for each included facility, asking for records of fuel purchased or consumed by the fleet. Fuel card statements, expense claims and vehicle logbooks are ideal sources.
- Someone completes each task — you or an assigned team member uploads fuel records against each facility's task.
- Results flow through — emissions are calculated per facility and roll up through your organisational structure to the dashboards and your report.
Some questions switch on more than one category. Answering yes to business travel, for example, includes flights, accommodation and ground transport — each with its own task — because they need different data and different emission factors.
What happens when you change an answer later
Your operations will change — you might add a vehicle fleet, start tracking a new Scope 3 category, or close a facility. When that happens, update your emissions boundary rather than working around the task list:
- Changing no to yes — the newly included categories generate their data tasks for each included location, and they appear in your Emissions Task Manager.
- Changing yes to no — the categories are excluded from calculation for that reporting period, and their tasks no longer form part of your data-collection workload.
- Your data is not deleted — data you have already uploaded is retained. Exclusion controls what is calculated and reported for the period, not what is stored.
- Review the Task Manager afterwards — after any boundary change, check your task list to confirm it reflects the new configuration before continuing data collection.
Your boundary settings carry over to each new reporting period, so you only revisit the questions when your business structure changes — an acquisition, a new facility, or a new activity. This keeps your year-on-year comparisons consistent. When a period is closed, NetNada preserves a snapshot of the boundary configuration used, so the settings behind any past result can always be retrieved.