📝ESG & Sustainability Reporting

Brightest provides a digital platform solution for omni-standard ESG reporting and compliance. This guide gives an overview of the ESG & sustainability frameworks offered in Brightest. We are happy to provide, encode, and set up additional standards and regulations. Please contact us to discuss your specific needs (support@brightest.io)

In Brightest’s ESG Reporting module, you can access standards and laws most relevant and applicable to your organization. The Brightest ESG Reporting Module is a fill-in template for key international ESG and Sustainability standards and frameworks.

Key features

Navigating the ESG Reporting Module
Create a report (ESG & Sustainability standard or framework) and use the fill-in template
Create a custom report
Autofill data that you already have in your account
Collaborate with teammates with the ability to assign specific questions or sections to teammates with task tracking, visibility, and oversight
Editing and viewing features
- View “report history” to see all changes made to your ESG report question by question
- Option to set up approval & auditing process
- Use AI-power generated suggested answers
- Export your finished or work-in-progress report as a CSV, PDF, word document, in XHTML, or other file formats
Brightest regularly updated and reviewed standards, laws, and regulations

Navigating the ESG Reporting Module

The ESG Reporting Module is where you can create ESG and sustainability reports and monitor report progress.

Summary: The landing page for the ESG Reporting Module opens to the summary tab. In the Summary tab, you can see an overview of each ESG and Sustainability report that has been created in your license. You can sort the summary view by report year, standard, last updated or date created.

The summary table shows the name of the report; the associated standard or framework; review status (if the report has been reviewed by an internal auditor); percent of the report that has been completed; number of tasks assigned, overdue or completed; email address of the person who last edited the report; date of when the report was last updated; date the report was created; and an edit button that takes you directly to the report for editing.

Standards & Compliance: In this tab, you can access, create and view all ESG standards and frameworks that have been enabled in your account ESG & Sustainability Settings. You can see all enabled standards in the top menu bar. Click on the standard names to navigate between the different reports.

Company Reports & Disclosures: In this tab, you can create a custom company report or disclosure. The landing page for this tab shows an overview of the report or disclosure name; the review status (whether it has been reviewed by an internal auditor); percent of the report that has been completed; number of tasks assigned, overdue or completed; email address of the person who last edited the report; date of when the report was last updated; and date the report was created.

Create an ESG & Sustainability standard or framework report

To create a report, first navigate to your account settings to enable the reporting standards and frameworks that are relevant to your organization.

Enable all relevant reporting standards and frameworks in your account settings. In account settings, go to Edit ESG & Sustainability Settings.
Click on the "Reporting" tab. Select the reporting standards and frameworks from the dropdown menu that are relevant to your organization. You can also enable the auditing workflow feature.
Click "save" and your ESG standards and frameworks will be added to your ESG Reporting Module.
Next, navigate to your ESG Reporting Module.
Click on the ESG standard or framework from the top menu bar that you want create a new report.
Click on the green "Create report" button.
Select the reporting year and if applicable, the sub report. If you used Brightest to write a report for the same standard for a previous year, Brightest can autofill certain responses from the previous report. To do this, enable the autofill option. Then click save.
Once you click save, the report fill-in template will appear.
Follow the questions and nested questions until you have completed the report.

Create a custom report or disclosure

To create a custom company report or disclosure navigate to the Company Reports & Disclosures tab of the ESG Reporting Module.

Click on the add tool button "Create Company Report"
Once you fill out the report name and year, a blank report will be created. You will then see the report in the Company Reports & Disclosure tab.
To add content to your custom report, click on the report name and "add content" to open the field form.
Fields in the report builder
1. Section: Enter the name of your report section e.g. Environmental
2. Section order: Enter the number order in which the section should appear in the report e.g. 1, 2, 3
3. Order: Enter the number order in which the question should appear in the report e.g. 1, 2, 3
4. Text: Type the question or disclosure or statement that you want to be answered in the report
5. Question type: Select what type of question you want to ask / the type of answer you want to receive e.g. quantitative, qualitative, select options, date, description, table
6. Units: Enter the units the answer should be given in (if applicable)
7. Notes: Type any notes that may provide further clarification, hints or information about the question

Autofill data

Data within your Brightest account can be autofilled to your ESG report via the use of custom KPIs or built-in ESG standard KPIs.

Add that custom KPI to an object in Brightest, like your ESG Dashboard, an Action, a Goal or an Asset. If you already added a built-in ESG standard KPI, you do not need to add it to another object in Brightest; it is already in your ESG Dashboard.
Enter data for that KPI either manually or using the survey function.
Once data has been entered for that KPI, you can click the autofill feature in the ESG report and data from the KPI will autofill into the report.

Note, we are working on expanding the autofill features of Brightest.

Collaborate on ESG reports with colleagues

You can collaborate with colleagues on your ESG reports using a variety of features.

Assigning questions or sections

Task management

Assign questions or sections to colleagues: Administrators and Managers can assign report sections and questions to colleagues to fill out.

Navigate to the top of your report.
Click on the button "Share"
Select the colleague(s) you want to assign a question or section of the report to. Then click next.
Select whether you want to assign individual report questions or sections to that colleague(s).
Select the questions or sections.
Fill out the "Task" form, assigning the task to your colleague. Fill out name (name of the assignment), description (of the assignment), priority and due date.
Once you click "share", that colleague will receive an email notification and have access to those questions or sections of the report.

Only users with administrator or manager roles can assign colleagues/teammates to items in Brightest. For example, they can assign users with the role Data Collaborator to items in Brightest. Data Collaborators will only be able to see the items in Brightest that have been assigned to them.

(Back to Collaborate)

Task Management

Once you have assigned tasks to colleagues, you can view and manage those tasks in your Governance Dashboard.

Navigate to your Governance Dashboard
Click on the "Tasks" tab
In the tasks tab, you will see a list of tasked assigned to colleagues.
Select the "Overdue" tab to see a list of overdue tasks
Select the "Completed" tab to see a list of completed tasks
To edit these tasks, click on the "edit" button

Task assignment is only available to users with the Administrator and Manager roles.

Editing and Viewing Features

There are a variety of editing and viewing features in the ESG reporting forms.

Share - collaborate with colleague on a report by assigning questions or sections to them
Export - export your report into a csv, pdf or word file
Autofill - autofill data from you have entered into your Brightest account to your ESG report. (only certain items within Brightest are mapped for the autofill feature)
Delete - to delete a report, click on the delete button
Save - to save the report draft, click on the save button. (Brightest does not have auto-saving features for ESG reports).
Submit - submit the report to an assigned auditor. First step, assign a colleague the role Brightest role "Auditor". Navigate to your account settings and ESG & Sustainability Settings. Click on the "Reporting" tab. Then ensure that the feature "Require approval for ESG reports" is switched on. When the ESG report in the ESG Reporting Module is submitted, the auditor will receive an email notification they should review the report.

Back to Editing and View Features

Status - status of the report if it has been reviewed by an auditor or has not yet been reviewed.
Current version - the landing page of the report is the current, latest updated version of the report.
Report history - this allows you to view edits made to the report. You can see who made the edits as well as the before and after versions.
Report sections - when you create a report, you will see a summary of each of the reporting sections. Click on the report section titles to jump to another section.

Back to Editing and Viewing Features

Upload an image - click on the image symbol in the right corner of the question to upload supporting images.
Upload a document - click on the document symbol in the right corner of the question to upload supporting documents.
Lock a question - click on the lock symbol to lock the question so that no one else can edit the question.
Notes - click on the note symbol to add an internal note to the question.
Comments - click on the comment bubble in the right menu bar to leave an internal comment about a question.
Double document symbol -
Cancel - click on the cancel symbol to delete the question.
AI power generated suggested response - click on the lightbulb symbol to enable an AI-powered generated response. The response is based off of publicly shared company information as well as the company data entered into Brightest. This feature is in the beta stage and we recommend you review the auto-generated responses and adapt it as needed. Note, Brightest does not share any data between companies.