Create Sustainability Activity

Hello, and welcome to this demo on Oracle Fusion Cloud Sustainability. A sustainability activity is a record of an event, action, or purchase that has sustainability impact. The impact can be environmental, social, or related to corporate governance, or can relate to any other sustainability area specific to your business.

An activity might be something that generated emissions. For example, a vehicle traveled a certain distance and consumed gasoline, or an office building used electricity, whose generation produced emissions.

An activity might be an event that had positive or negative effects on water sources, biodiversity, or waste. Social activities might include those related to community engagement, like volunteering or charitable giving. Governance activities might include trainings or risk assessments.

Oracle Sustainability offers various methods through which activities can be created. User Interface. Use this method to quickly create ad hoc activities or to edit activities created through any source. VB Add-in for Excel. This method offers the convenience and familiarity of an Excel spreadsheet interface. Use this method to create, update, or delete multiple activities in one go.

REST Services. Use this method to integrate with a third-party system, to bring in activities from external sources, and to keep activity data in sync across systems. File-based Data Import. Use this method to create or delete large volumes of activities. You can use this for conversion or high-volume integration.

Generate from Payables Invoices. If you use Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud to manage your suppliers invoices, you can automatically create activities from these invoices using invoice classification rules. In this demo, I will walk you through creating and editing activities using the UI.

I will dig deeper into the various calculation mode options available to use. Once you understand the structure of the activity and the calculation modes, you can apply the same to any of the interfaces available. Let's get into the demo.

I can see the activities already created here. To create a new activity, let's click on Create Activity button here on the top right. Sustainability activities are grouped into activity types. Each activity type can have one or more attributes, which are attributes specific to an activity type that capture data to help describe an activity.

For example, a Stationary Combustion activity has Fuel Type as an Activity Type attribute, whereas a Purchase Goods and Services activity type has Spend Type as an Activity Type. And Mobile Combustion has Energy Source, Vehicle Type, and Percent Laden as Activity Type attributes.

For this demo, let's take a possible real-life situation. We had an adverse weather event in our factory in the last week and we had a long power outage that lasted a whole week. We had to keep the factory running using backup generators that burn compressed natural gas.

I have the report in my hand that we have used 31.543 metric tons of compressed natural gas to keep the factory running. I need to record this activity now to report on the emissions impact. I first select the Activity Type Stationary Combustion. And then I select the Fuel Type Compressed Natural Gas.

Now, let's enter a Description, "Backup generator for factory - power outage." Now I leave the Activity Date as is, but need to specify the Legal Entity as Vision Operations. Now I provide the Consumption Start and End Dates. So this outage began on the 22 and lasted all the way till the 28 of this month.

Now, let's look at the Measures section. An activity typically also includes one or more measure values. For example, on a stationary combustion activity, you typically capture the quantity of fuel consumed. On a mobile combustion activity, you typically capture both the quantity of fuel consumed and the distance traveled.

On a purchased goods and services activity, you might want to capture both the quantity purchased and the amount spent. On a volunteering activity, you might capture the time spent. This section is visible only if you associated one or more measure types to the Activity Type.

In our case, we already have the amount of fuel consumed. So I click on Add Measure and choose the Activity Type Quantity, the Measure Type Quantity, and I enter the value of 31.453 in the Quantity field and choose Metric Ton in the UOM field. And click Add.

Now let's focus on the Emissions section. This section is visible only if you associate one or more emission types to the activity types. Our administrators have already created emission factor mappings for stationary combustion, using compressed natural gas as a fuel type. The emissions will be calculated automatically when I click on Save or Save and Close. Let me click on Save because I want to see the emission calculation.

I saved, and now I see the emissions have been calculated automatically based on the emission factor mappings that our administrator has set up. I can click on the factor to see the details. As you can see, we have used emission factors from the UK factor source.

After I close the emission factor detail, scrolling down just a little bit, I can see a Data source section. I can optionally associate this activity to an invoice or to an external document reference number that I might have maintained.

Scrolling down a little further, I can see that this activity is already associated to a ledger based on the legal entity I have selected, and a ledger period based on the activity date. When I post this activity to the ledger, it will be accounted for in this period. Scrolling down a little further, I can optionally add a comment.

Now, let's go back up and focus on the other two calculation modes. I can use Manual entry of factors when I do not have the correct emission factor setup or if I want to use another set of emission factors given by, say, a supplier. The calculation engine will then calculate emissions based on the factors specified, and that factor only applies to this activity. To illustrate this, let me switch to Manual entry of factors.

Let's say the compressed natural gas that I have used is a greener version that's specifically procured, and the supplier has provided me an audited report that the carbon dioxide equivalent is 1952.335 kilograms per metric ton.

Now I can edit the emission factor and enter the factor as 1952.235 and click Update. And then I can click Save. As you can see, the new factor entered was used to calculate emissions. Now let's look at the other calculation mode, Manual entry of emissions. Let me switch to this mode.

You can use this mode if you just want to enter the emissions that are calculated by a third party. This is usually prevalent among utility or logistics providers. These companies have systems that track actual emissions and provide a certified report of actual emissions that we can readily use.

For example, let's assume that I already know that the total emissions that were caused by the backup generator for this activity was 21434.11 kilograms. I can click on Edit and enter 21434.11 kilograms and click Update and save.

As you can see, the actual emission quantity entered was used to calculate the total CO2e calculation. Now I can hit Save and Close and start focusing on other activities. That concludes the demo.

We have learned how a sustainability activity can be created and how emissions can be calculated using the three different calculation modes. You can use any of the methods described in the beginning of this demo to create and manage sustainability activities. Thank you.