What is the Business Travel section?
Business travel captures the environmental impact of employee trips made for work purposes — flights, train journeys, car trips to client sites, and other work-related travel. These emissions are part of your organizational footprint under GHG Scope 3.6 (business travel).
Root lets you upload detailed trip data and calculates the total emissions based on the travel mode, distance, and whether a company vehicle was used.
How business travel data works in Root
Business travel data is recorded per trip. For each trip, you provide:
Travel ID — A unique identifier for the trip (for your own reference).
Date — The date of the trip.
Departure — Where the trip starts.
Arrival — Where the trip ends.
Travel mode — How the employee travels (e.g. car, train, plane).
Distance — The total trip distance in kilometers.
Owned/leased — Whether a company-owned vehicle was used.
How to add business travel data
Step 1: Prepare your data file
Create a CSV or Excel file with one row per trip. The required columns are:
Column | Description | Example |
Travel ID | Unique trip identifier | BT-2024-001 |
Date | Date of travel | 15/03/24 |
Departure | Starting location | Amsterdam |
Arrival | Destination | Berlin |
Travel mode | How the employee travels | Train |
Distance (km) | Total trip distance in km | 650 |
Owned/leased | Company vehicle? (yes/no) | no |
Step 2: Upload the file
Go to the data upload section and upload your business travel 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 Business Travel section. You’ll see your trip records listed by year, with filtering options for travel ID, departure, arrival, travel mode, and ownership.
Step 4: Match travel modes
Any new travel modes created during upload need to be matched to impact datasets. Go to the Travel Modes section under Employees to assign references. See the Travel Modes Matching article for details.
Completion status
Year status:
Complete — At least one business travel 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 business travel data should be matched to datasets.
How plane travel works
When a travel mode is assigned the “Plane” reference, Root automatically selects the right emission factor based on the distance of each individual trip:
Over 4,000 km — Long haul
1,500 to 4,000 km — Medium haul
800 to 1,500 km — Short haul
Under 800 km — Very short haul
This happens automatically for each trip. You don’t need to create separate travel modes for different flight distances.
How impact is calculated
For each business trip:
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).
For plane travel, the distance-based sub-dataset (long haul, short haul, etc.).
GHG scope allocation
Business travel emissions are allocated based on whether the vehicle is company-owned or leased. This is set per trip 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, taxi, public transport, etc.) | — | — | 3.6 (business travel) |
When employees travel 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 travel by any other means, the entire impact falls under Scope 3.6.
This is why the owned/leased flag matters for every trip — it determines whether the emissions are reported as direct company emissions (Scope 1/2) or as value chain emissions (Scope 3.6).
Deleting business travel data
You can delete business travel data for a specific year or for all years at once. This removes all trip records but does not delete the associated travel modes.
Exporting data
You can export your business travel 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
Record each trip individually. Unlike commuting (which is an annual total), business travel is recorded per trip with specific dates and locations.
Use the travel ID to track trips. This helps you identify and manage individual records.
You don’t need separate modes for flight distances. Just assign the “Plane” reference once, and Root handles long-haul vs. short-haul automatically based on distance.
Match all travel modes before finalizing. Unmatched modes are excluded from calculations, meaning your totals will be incomplete.
Business travel and commuting share travel modes. If “Car” is used for both, it only needs to be matched once.
Mark vehicles correctly. The owned/leased flag affects both emission factors and GHG scope allocation.