It is worth being blunt about what has happened. The ISSB standards were issued by the IFRS Foundation — the body behind the accounting standards you already apply. They require sustainability information to connect to the financial statements, on the same reporting boundary, for the same period, prepared on a stated basis, with judgements and estimation uncertainties disclosed.
That is financial reporting. It has arrived in a sustainability wrapper and it will, in most companies, eventually move into your function whether or not anyone plans for it.
Once you read it that way, the requirements stop being unfamiliar. You already know what it means for a number to have a basis of preparation, an audit trail, a control environment and a sign-off chain. The only genuinely new thing is the subject matter.
These are the questions that turn a two-week engagement into a two-month one when the answers live in someone's inbox.
A consultant-led reporting cycle is priced on effort, and most of that effort is not expertise. It is collection, chasing, reconciliation and formatting — work that is nearly identical across clients and scales with headcount.
That is where the 60–70% figure comes from. It is not a claim that software is cheaper than people in some abstract sense; it is the observation that the manual portion of the work is the large portion, and that it is the portion a platform actually removes.
Two things that comparison usually omits, and should not. First, a consultant does not eliminate your own team’s time — somebody internal still has to find the meter readings and explain the operations, and on a first cycle that is substantial. Second, a platform does not eliminate it either; it reduces it. Any model that shows internal effort going to zero is selling you something.
The cost comparison tool prices both sides including internal time, with every assumption visible and editable. If our effort model does not match what you have been quoted, change it and see what the answer becomes.
| A consultant engagement | A reporting system | |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable | A report, and usually a workbook | A report, the data behind it, and the evidence behind that |
| Year two | Re-scoped and re-quoted | Rolled forward, with comparatives already in place |
| Method | In the consultant’s head and their template | Recorded against each calculation |
| If the relationship ends | You keep the PDF | You export the full dataset, evidence included |
| Assurance readiness | Depends entirely on how the consultant worked | Built in, because evidence is attached at entry |
This is a deliberate position rather than a limitation, and it is worth explaining why.
FX exposure on a compliance tool creates three separate problems for a Nigerian finance function. It is a procurement problem, because sourcing foreign currency for a software licence requires justification. It is a budgeting problem, because a naira budget against a dollar liability is a forecast you cannot hold. And it is a renewal problem, because a rate movement can turn a modest annual cost into a board conversation.
None of those problems have anything to do with sustainability, and a compliance obligation should not import them. Emvert is priced and invoiced in Naira, permanently.
In most companies it starts in sustainability and migrates to finance, usually at the point where assurance enters the picture or where the disclosure has to close on the financial timetable. Emvert is built to be used by both: sustainability owns the collection, finance owns the control environment and the sign-off.
Yes, with a read-only role scoped to the reporting year being assured, or through an export containing the disclosure, the calculations and the linked evidence. Their access is recorded like everyone else’s.
The filed version is retained unaltered. You decide whether to restate, and if you do, the restatement is recorded as a new version with its reason — which is what the disclosure requirements around restatement actually ask for.
Licence plus internal time, and — separately — assurance. Assurance is the one to ask about early, because provider capacity in the first mandatory years will be tight and because the fee depends heavily on how traceable your evidence is.
It is indicative. Final pricing depends on entity count, site count and whether Scope 3 is in your first cycle. A demo ends with a written quote in Naira rather than a range you negotiate down from.
A summary of a regulation is not the regulation. These are the primary documents this page is based on.
Four questions, and you get the year you first file, the framework, and what to collect first.
Plain-language explainers of the FRC and SEC rules, ISSB S1 & S2, and what each asks you to disclose.
What a consultant-led reporting cycle costs against an annual licence, in Naira.
