Will your spreadsheet survive assurance?
An Excel-based DMA can work — until it doesn’t. Tick your actual requirements below and see a live verdict on where your spreadsheet holds up, where it breaks, and whether a dedicated platform is justified.
Tick what applies to your DMA.
Each item reflects an ESRS 1 requirement, an EFRAG IG 1 guidance point, or a practical audit-readiness consideration. The verdict updates live.
Your requirements
Select every item that applies to your DMA.
Scale & complexity
Assurance & audit
Stakeholders & governance
Reporting cycle
Start with the list on the left.
Each requirement adds a weighted risk to your spreadsheet-based approach. Verdict updates live.
Reasons will appear as you tick items.
When Excel genuinely works — and when it stops.
We sell a platform, so this section could be a hatchet job on spreadsheets. It isn’t. Excel is a perfectly good tool for certain DMA contexts — and a liability in others. Here’s the honest split.
One person, one entity, one filing cycle
- VSME-scope voluntary reporting for a single-site SME — a simple Excel template is often the pragmatic choice
- First-time DMA as a learning exercise, where the goal is understanding the methodology rather than producing an assured output
- Internal scoping study before choosing a platform — sketching the structure in Excel to agree on IROs before committing to software
- Pre-CSRD-mandatory timeline, when you are genuinely still deciding whether sustainability reporting is part of your operating model
- Consultant-delivered DMA where the consultant owns the methodology and you only need the output as a static record
The reporting cycle becomes recurring and regulated
- An auditor needs a tamper-evident evidence trail with linked supporting files per scoring decision
- Three or more people need to collaborate on the same assessment at the same time, across entities or functions
- Year-on-year comparability is required and methodology needs to be preserved across cycles
- Stakeholder engagement involves structured voting with weighted aggregation across multiple respondent groups
- The board or audit committee needs a one-page summary that updates live as the assessment progresses
- Scope extends beyond a single entity or single jurisdiction — consolidation logic in Excel becomes fragile fast
Side-by-side, feature by feature.
Not everything a platform does is better than a spreadsheet. Where a well-built Excel model genuinely matches, we say so.
Questions on spreadsheet DMA.
Our auditor accepted a spreadsheet DMA last year. Is that still fine?
For a first-cycle voluntary disclosure, many auditors have been pragmatic — accepting Excel-based DMA documentation with manual evidence trails. That tolerance is narrowing as assurance engagements mature and CSRD moves from limited toward reasonable assurance.
The practical shift you will feel: auditors are increasingly asking for linked evidence per scoring decision, tamper-evident change logs, and reviewer attestation workflows. A spreadsheet can technically provide these — but the level of manual discipline required to sustain them across cycles is high and rarely survives staff turnover.
Can I import data from my existing Excel DMA into the platform?
Yes. The platform accepts CSV import for IRO lists, scoring, and evidence references, and supports direct mapping from common DMA template structures. You don’t have to redo work you’ve already done — the platform takes your existing inputs and preserves them in an auditable structure.
What if I like our custom spreadsheet logic?
Two answers. First, if your logic is standard ESRS methodology, the platform probably already implements it — severity formulas, weighted aggregation, impact vs financial materiality thresholds. Second, if your logic is genuinely firm-specific, you can maintain proprietary scoring weights and thresholds in the platform as configurable parameters. What the platform removes is the maintenance burden, not the customisation.
Why is the platform free if spreadsheets work for some cases?
We charge for optional implementation support when enterprises or consultancies want expert-led scoping, audit-committee engagement or structured stakeholder workshops. The platform itself is free because sustainability reporting tooling should not be a revenue-extraction play at a moment when every mandated filer needs to get this right. Free also means we don’t need a “talk to sales” wall — if Excel works better for your specific case, that is a legitimate outcome.
Can we use the platform alongside our existing spreadsheets?
Yes — many teams run parallel workflows initially. The platform for the audit-grade structured workflow (assessment, evidence, sign-off, reporting), Excel for ad-hoc analysis, sensitivity testing or board-specific views. Platform data exports to CSV and XLSX so the two workflows coexist without duplicate entry.
Other ways people approach DMA.
Try the platform. Keep the spreadsheet if you prefer.
Free forever, no trial expiry, CSV import supported. If Excel still wins for your specific case after a proper test, that is a legitimate outcome — and the import / export works both ways.