A customer ESG questionnaire is due in five days, or three, or tomorrow. It has been in someone's inbox for a while. Now it is urgent.
Before you open it, establish three things: what the customer needs by the deadline, what you can supply honestly by then, and what you will say about the rest.
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Deadline in days | Triage the questionnaire into three tiers (below). Answer tiers 1 and 2. Mark tier 3 as not tracked. Submit. |
| Deadline in hours | Two passes: answer from knowledge, then chase four numbers in parallel. Submit what you have. |
| Deadline is not achievable | Ask for an extension with a date and a reason. Send a partial with a completion date rather than nothing. |
| It is a platform, not a spreadsheet | Same triage; the platform rules on blanks and late submission differ (below). |
This guide does not make the questionnaire shorter. It makes sure the hours you have go to the questions the customer actually uses. If you want a rough figure for how long the whole questionnaire will take given your data, the free time estimator gives one; it is useful when you need to propose an extension date.
Why it takes so long
The questionnaire itself is rarely the problem. Data collection is. The hours go into finding information that lives in six places:
- Energy: twelve months of utility bills; the office manager; the facilities team
- Emissions: conversion factors, methodology, checking the arithmetic
- Workforce: headcount from HR; FTE versus headcount; gender split
- Policies: which exist, where the files are, which are out of date
- Waste and water: the hauler, the invoices, estimates where data is missing
- Narrative answers: describing an "approach to sustainability governance" that has never been written down
Each task is small. Together they take days, across people who have other jobs. You cannot fix that under a deadline. You triage.
Triage the questionnaire into three tiers
Read the whole questionnaire once without answering anything. Then sort every question into one of three tiers.
Tier 1 — answer now, no data needed. Yes/no questions about policies and practices you know you have. Do you have a health and safety policy? If yes, answer yes. Also here: questions where "No" or "Not applicable" is the honest answer. No formal biodiversity policy? Answer no. No hazardous waste in your operations? Mark not applicable.
Tier 2 — answer with a quick data pull. Numbers that exist and are accessible: total employees (HR), annual energy consumption (finance, from utility bills), safety incidents (operations), revenue (finance). These do not need research. They need one message to the right person.
Prioritize energy consumption, headcount, and safety incidents. They are the inputs your customer uses for their own Scope 3 reporting and their supplier risk screening.
Tier 3 — mark as not tracked and move on. Questions that need calculation, research, or data you do not have: Scope 3 emissions across fifteen categories, the ESG performance of your own suppliers, third-party verification. Write one line: "Not currently tracked. We plan to develop this metric in [timeframe]." Do not guess. The guide on responding with missing ESG data has wording for each type of gap.
If you have hours, not days
First pass. Work through every question and answer from what you know now: yes/no policy questions, obvious not-applicables, numbers you happen to know (headcount, approximate revenue). Do not stop to look anything up. Mark uncertain items to return to.
Second pass. Send four requests at the same time, not one after another: energy consumption to whoever handles utility bills; headcount to HR; safety incidents to operations or HR; revenue to finance. Say it is urgent and give the deadline.
Everything else gets the "not currently tracked" line. Submit.
What customers use first
Energy and emissions. Your energy consumption is the primary input for your customer's calculation of the emissions you contribute to their supply chain. If you can supply nothing else, supply this. If you have the energy figures but no emissions number, the free carbon calculator converts them into a Scope 1 and 2 figure.
Headcount and safety incidents. These show a functioning organization with oversight of labor practice.
Policy confirmations. Yes/no on environmental, safety, and ethics policies. Quick to answer; establishes baseline governance.
Scope 3 breakdowns, supplier assessments, verification. Rarely urgent. Customers who ask for these generally know that most suppliers do not have them yet.
If it is a platform, not a spreadsheet
The triage is the same. The rules on blanks and lateness are not.
- EcoVadis scores unanswered questions as zero and weights uploaded documents heavily. Attach the policies you have, even if imperfect. Skip nothing. See the EcoVadis questionnaire response guide.
- CDP has a scoring deadline (week of 14 September in 2026) and a later cut-off for unscored responses. Missing the first does not stop you disclosing. See the CDP supply chain guide.
- Customer spreadsheets are the most forgiving. Ask which reporting period they want. Write "Not applicable — [reason]" rather than leaving cells empty. A partial with a completion date is better than nothing.
- VSME-aligned requests follow the EFRAG VSME standard's Basic Module. The VSME reporting guide explains what each disclosure asks for.
Tell the customer before the deadline, not after
If you will miss the deadline or submit an incomplete response, say so first. Customers accommodate a clear request. They do not accommodate silence.
Holding message on day one:
We have received the ESG questionnaire and are working through it now. By the deadline we can provide confirmed information for company profile, policy status, headcount, safety data, and available energy figures. Some emissions or supplier-level data may need follow-up because we do not currently track every requested metric. We will mark any estimated or unavailable data clearly and include a plan for improving coverage.
Extension request:
This is our first ESG response and gathering complete data is taking longer than anticipated. Would an extension to [proposed date] be possible? We want to provide accurate information rather than estimates.
Partial submission note:
Attached is our response with [sections] complete. [Sections] are marked as not currently tracked; we are targeting [date] for those items. Please tell us if any of them are needed urgently.
What not to do
Do not invent numbers. An emissions figure with nothing behind it becomes a problem when the customer benchmarks it or audits it. "Not currently measured" is the correct answer.
Do not skip the questionnaire. A partial response shows engagement. No response reads as either inability or indifference.
Do not upload a template as your policy. A generic environmental policy downloaded and uploaded as your own is misrepresentation. If you do not have a policy, say so.
Do not send different numbers to different customers. If EcoVadis holds your emissions at 150 tCO2e and a customer spreadsheet says 200, someone compares them. One dataset, one set of numbers.
Do not complain about the process to the customer. They are answering their own regulatory and customer pressure. The questionnaire is not optional for them either.
Deadline checklist
- ☐ Read the whole questionnaire before answering anything
- ☐ Answer all yes/no policy questions from current knowledge
- ☐ Mark not-applicable items for your business type
- ☐ Request energy, headcount, safety, and revenue in parallel
- ☐ Fill quantitative fields with the data that arrives
- ☐ Write "not currently tracked" plus a timeframe for the rest
- ☐ Add a one-line methodology note where a number needs one
- ☐ Send the holding message or extension request if needed
- ☐ Review once for errors and inconsistencies
- ☐ Submit
Make the next one compilation, not archaeology
Suppliers who respond quickly are not rushing. They have the data before the question arrives. Once this questionnaire is submitted, spend an hour on the following.
Save what you sent. Export or screenshot the completed questionnaire. The next one asks the same things in different words.
Write your twelve standard answers. Nearly every ESG questionnaire asks a version of each; write each once and update annually:
- Company description — what you do, where, how many people
- Environmental policy summary — two or three sentences
- Emissions — Scope 1 and 2 figures with methodology
- Energy — what you consume, any efficiency measures
- Waste — volumes, recycling approach, any targets
- Water — consumption, any conservation measures
- Workforce — composition, diversity, employment practices
- Health and safety — incident record, policies, training
- Governance — who oversees what, how often
- Supply chain — how you assess your own suppliers
- Ethics and compliance — anti-corruption, code of conduct, whistleblowing
- Targets — any sustainability goals you have set
Log monthly. Electricity and gas (kWh), fuel (liters), water (m³), waste (metric tons), headcount, incidents, training hours. The energy tracking guide shows the simplest version.
Set a reminder. If this customer sends an annual questionnaire, put a reminder two months before the usual deadline.
Name the owner. If no one owns the next ESG request, it lands in the same place this one did.
The full setup — one dataset, one set of standard answers, one place the evidence lives — is in building an ESG response system. ESG Passport does the same job as software: it keeps the tracked data and the standard answers together and drafts responses from them.