Frequently Asked Questions

Aila's VSME Reporting Tool is a simple, automated solution designed to help comply with the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME-ESRS). It streamlines sustainability reporting, making it easier for businesses to meet ESG requirements, enhance transparency, and improve stakeholder confidence.

Our tool is designed for non-listed under 1000 employees enterprises that need to report their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance—whether to meet supply chain requirements, attract green financing, or align with industry best practices.

No! Aila's tool is built for ease of use, providing step-by-step guidance, pre-filled templates, and multiple-choice questions to make reporting accessible to everyone.

• Full access to VSME modules (Basic & Comprehensive)
• Guided ESG reporting with structured questionnaires
• Clear report preview for reviewing and printing the report
• Exportable reports in Excel format for easy integration
• Smart data storage for continuous reporting and tracking

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The GHG Protocol (Greenhouse Gas Protocol) is an internationally used standard for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas emissions (also known as "carbon footprint").

The protocol assists companies in measuring and reporting their own climate impacts in a consistent and comparable manner. It divides emissions into three different categories (scopes):

• Scope 1: The company's own direct emissions (e.g., fuel use, vehicles)
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased energy by the company (e.g., electricity, heat)
• Scope 3: Other indirect emissions in the value chain (e.g., procurement, transportation, use of sold products)

The GHG Protocol is also a central framework in sustainability reporting according to the SME standard. In the SME standard's Basic Module, a company reports Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and if desired, also Scope 3 emissions from predetermined areas.

VSME (The Voluntary Standard for non-listed Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises) is a sustainability reporting standard created on the initiative of the European Commission. It was developed by EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group), which is the European advisory group for financial reporting.

VSME is designed to clarify and standardize SMEs' ESG reporting. The standard is practical and user-friendly, making it particularly suitable for companies that are starting sustainability reporting. It also aims to harmonize stakeholder ESG requests (e.g., from companies subject to CSRD reporting) and facilitate SMEs' access to sustainable finance.

Yes, the VSME report can technically also be created in Excel. It can be a viable option especially if you already have a clear understanding of the structure and content of the reporting and you are only reporting the basic module (Basic Module).

However, Excel is a more limited tool, and manual work is easily prone to errors, especially when multiple people are involved in data collection and editing.

Aila's reporting tool provides a structured and guided way to create a VSME report. Its advantages include:

• Certainty that the report conforms to the structure and requirements of the VSME standard
• Guided data collection that facilitates assembling content into the correct format
• Adding comments and supplementary information alongside the data. The additional details may be for internal company use only or can be published together with the report.
• Unlimited number of users, which allows for collaboration with the team and experts (e.g., accountant or auditor)
• Data analysis with the help of Aila AI assistant
• The opportunity to utilize stored information for reporting in the following year or to create a new, updated version of the report even in the middle of the fiscal year.
• Exporting data in Excel format, if needed for other systems. Additional information and comments are also saved in the Excel file.

Yes, in the basic module of the VSME standard, a company reports Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions in accordance with the GHG Protocol.

If the company has also calculated Scope 3 emissions, they can also be reported in the basic module. Scope 3 emissions are reported on the VSME report from predetermined areas.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a European Union directive that requires large companies to publish information on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts of their operations. The CSRD expands the previous Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and aims to increase transparency and comparability in corporate sustainability reporting.

The provisions of the CSRD began to be applied gradually from 2024, depending on the size and type of the company. In the first phase, the CSRD applied to companies that exceed two of the following three criteria

• 250 employees
• Balance of 25 million euros
• 50 million euro turnover.

In February 2025, the European Commission proposed a legislative package to simplify EU rules and enhance competitiveness (known as the Omnibus package), which suggests relaxations and deferrals of the directive.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is primarily aimed at relatively large companies (see more details from the link below), but it is designed to eventually also cover listed SMEs. Due to ongoing changes (the so-called Omnibus package published in early 2025), it is not yet precisely known how the requirements will expand.

However, CSRD already has an indirect impact on SMEs through the value chains of large companies. For this reason, a voluntary VSME standard, which is compatible with CSRD and ESRS, has been created for companies that fall outside of CSRD, such as small SMEs and unlisted SMEs.