The EcoVadis questionnaire is open and the deadline is real. The fastest defensible approach is not to write polished sustainability claims. It is to map each selected answer to evidence your company already has, expose the gaps, and have the right owner approve what will be submitted.
This page is for completing the questionnaire. For costs, scope, scoring and what the invitation means, start with the EcoVadis supplier guide.
Before answering anything
Confirm the company details shown in EcoVadis: legal entity, assessment scope, location, industry and size. EcoVadis uses these details to customize the questionnaire. If one is wrong, resolve it before investing heavily in answers.
Then ask the customer what they need and by when. “Complete EcoVadis” can mean a submitted questionnaire, a published scorecard or a particular result. Those are different deadlines.
Download a working copy
EcoVadis' own preparation guidance tells suppliers to download the questionnaire. Use that copy as the control sheet for the work outside the portal. The exact questions and answer options in your assigned questionnaire matter; a generic checklist cannot reproduce a questionnaire customized to your company.
Add working columns beside each question:
| Field | What belongs there |
|---|---|
| Proposed answer | The option supported by the evidence, not the option you hope to reach later |
| Evidence | File name and relevant page or section |
| Scope | Entity, site, workforce or activity covered |
| Period | Date, reporting year or validity period |
| Owner | Person who can confirm the fact |
| Status | Yes, No, Not applicable, Unknown, or Not yet measured |
| Gap or action | What is missing and what happens next |
Keep “No,” “Not applicable,” “Unknown” and “Not yet measured” separate. They describe different realities. Do not turn a missing measurement into zero, or a missing document into a claim that the practice exists.
Build the evidence map before drafting
Start with the records, not the prose. Ask the people who already hold the underlying information:
| Theme | Likely owners | Evidence to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Environment | Operations, facilities, finance | Energy and fuel records, waste records, environmental policy, permits, targets, certifications |
| Labor and Human Rights | HR, health and safety, operations | Employee policies, incident records, risk assessments, training records, worker consultation |
| Ethics | Legal, finance, HR, IT | Code of conduct, anti-bribery controls, whistleblowing process, data-protection procedures, training |
| Sustainable Procurement | Procurement, quality, operations | Supplier code, onboarding checks, contract clauses, supplier assessments, audit records |
Do not upload a large document and make the analyst hunt. Record the page or section that supports the selected option.
Answer only to the strength of the evidence
EcoVadis says the options selected in the questionnaire are evaluated against the documents attached to them. Choose the option your evidence supports today.
For every proposed answer, check:
- Relevance: does the file support this exact option?
- Scope: does it cover the entity or operations being assessed?
- Date: is it current for the period the question requires?
- Identity: is the company name or other ownership clear?
- Traceability: can a reviewer find the supporting passage quickly?
If the answer depends on a calculation, keep the source figures, units, period and method together. If an owner cannot confirm a claim, leave it open rather than smoothing over the uncertainty.
Use real operational documents
EcoVadis accepts formal documents that reflect the company's sustainability management system. Its current examples include policies, procedures, sustainability reports, social-audit reports, employee handbooks and certificates.
The platform also sets limits. EcoVadis says it will not credit documents created solely to satisfy the questionnaire, copied from another organization, forged, or unrelated to its sustainability criteria. A newly formatted description of a real established process may help colleagues understand it, but it does not create historical evidence that the process operated.
Prefer machine-readable originals exported from Word, Excel or an internal system. Scans, photographs, handwritten material, locked files and image-only text may not be fully extracted or translated.
Handle genuine gaps without inventing evidence
When evidence is missing, decide which situation applies:
- The practice exists, but the record is elsewhere. Find the owner and retrieve it.
- The practice exists, but was not recorded. State only what can be verified and create a proper record going forward.
- The practice does not exist. Answer accordingly and put the improvement into an action plan.
- The question is not applicable. Use the available platform option or comment to explain why, without disguising “not yet done” as “not applicable.”
- You do not know yet. Keep it open until the owner responds or disclose the uncertainty.
Do not create or claim a policy simply because the questionnaire has a blank. EcoVadis explicitly warns against evidence produced only for the assessment.
Review before entering the portal
Have the relevant owner approve each material claim and figure. Then perform one final consistency check:
- company name and assessment scope match;
- dates and reporting periods are explicit;
- the answer and attached evidence say the same thing;
- repeated figures are consistent across themes;
- expired certificates are not presented as current;
- gaps remain visible rather than being converted into unsupported claims.
Preparing outside the portal gives you a reviewable record of who approved what. It also gives you an answer file you can reuse when another customer asks a similar question in different language.
How Questionnaire Pass works for EcoVadis
Questionnaire Pass does not log in to EcoVadis, choose your assessment scope, upload documents or submit the assessment.
- You provide: the downloaded questionnaire or working copy, plus the policies, records and figures you want used.
- Questionnaire Pass prepares: reviewable draft answers grounded in those files, with unsupported questions left open instead of guessed.
- You finish: confirm the drafts with the relevant owners, select the approved answers in EcoVadis, attach the evidence and submit through the platform.
For one open request, use Questionnaire Pass. If different customers regularly send spreadsheets, PDFs, RFPs and portal questions, ESG Passport is the separate reuse product that keeps approved answers and evidence ready for the next request.
After submission
Keep the approved working file, the submitted evidence set and the final scorecard together. When EcoVadis identifies an improvement area, turn it into an action with an owner, target date and evidence to create. That is more useful than trying to reverse-engineer a medal from generic online advice.
After the scorecard is published, work from its specific improvement areas and confirm the customer's actual requirement. Do not substitute a generic online target for either of those inputs.