What is the Employee Commuting section?
Employee commuting captures the environmental impact of your employees’ daily trips between home and work. Even though your company doesn’t directly control how employees travel, these emissions are part of your organizational footprint under GHG Scope 3.7 (employee commuting).
Root lets you upload commuting data for all your employees and calculates the total emissions based on how they travel and how far.
How commuting data works in Root
Commuting data is recorded per employee, per year. For each employee, you provide:
Employee ID — A unique identifier for the employee (for your own reference).
Year — The reporting year.
Country — The country where the employee commutes.
Travel mode — How they travel (e.g. car, train, bus, bicycle).
Total distance — The total commuting distance in kilometers per year.
Owned/leased — Whether the employee uses a company-owned vehicle.
How to add commuting data
Step 1: Prepare your data file
Create a CSV or Excel file with one row per employee. The required columns are:
Column | Description | Example |
Employee ID | Unique employee identifier | EMP-001 |
Year | Reporting year (YYYY) | 2024 |
Country | Country of commute | Netherlands |
Travel mode | How the employee travels | Car |
Total distance (km/year) | Annual commuting distance in km | 8,500 |
Owned/leased | Company vehicle? (yes/no) | no |
Step 2: Upload the file
Go to the data upload section and upload your commuting file. Root will validate each row, flag any dates outside your reporting period, create travel modes automatically for new mode names, and import the validated records.
Step 3: Review your data
After upload, navigate to the Employee Commuting section. You’ll see your commuting records listed by year, with filtering options for employee ID, country, travel mode, and ownership.
Step 4: Match travel modes
Any new travel modes created during upload will start as “unmatched.” Go to the Travel Modes section to assign impact datasets to each mode. See the Travel Modes Matching article for details.
Completion status
Year status:
Complete — At least one commuting record exists for that year.
Incomplete — No records have been uploaded for that year.
Travel mode status:
Complete — The travel mode is linked to an impact dataset.
Incomplete — No dataset has been assigned yet.
For fully accurate results, all travel modes used in your commuting data should be matched to datasets.
How impact is calculated
For each commuting record:
Impact = travel mode emission factor × distance (km)
Root selects the emission factor based on:
The travel mode’s assigned dataset.
The geography (prefers global datasets, then falls back to rest-of-world).
Whether the vehicle is company-owned (owned vehicles may have different emission factors).
GHG scope allocation
Commuting emissions are allocated based on whether the vehicle is company-owned or leased. This is set per employee via the “Owned/leased” field.
Vehicle ownership | Scope 1 | Scope 2 | Scope 3 |
Company-owned or leased vehicle | 1.2 (mobile combustion) | 2.1 (purchased electricity) | 3.3 (fuel & energy-related) |
Non-owned vehicle (employee’s own car, public transport, bicycle, etc.) | — | — | 3.7 (employee commuting) |
When employees commute in a company vehicle, the direct fuel combustion is Scope 1.2, any electricity used (e.g. for electric vehicles) is Scope 2.1, and the upstream fuel and energy production is Scope 3.3. When they commute by any other means, the entire impact falls under Scope 3.7.
This is why the owned/leased flag matters — it determines whether commuting emissions are reported as direct company emissions (Scope 1/2) or as value chain emissions (Scope 3.7).
Deleting commuting data
You can delete commuting data for a specific year or for all years at once. This removes all commuting records but does not delete the associated travel modes.
Exporting data
You can export your commuting data as a file at any time. The export includes all records for a given year (or all years), formatted with the same column structure as the upload template.
Tips
Upload commuting data once per year. Commuting is typically reported as an annual total per employee, not individual trips.
Use the employee ID consistently. This helps you track and update records for specific employees across years.
Match all travel modes before finalizing. Unmatched travel modes are excluded from impact calculations, which means your commuting totals will be incomplete.
Mark vehicles correctly. The owned/leased flag affects GHG scope allocation. Company-owned vehicles have a different reporting treatment.
One travel mode covers both commuting and business travel. If employees use “Car” for both, the mode only needs to be matched once.