Sumday and Xero: Partnering to empower SMBs

Leave No Business Behind

Today we're excited to announce that the Sumday Carbon and Xero partnership enters a new chapter.

Xero is used by over 4.5 million small and medium businesses globally. Many of them are your suppliers. And as of April 2026, every single one of them now has access to free carbon accounting tools through our continued partnership.

For companies with supply chain emissions targets, this really matters!

If you have a Scope 3 reduction target, you already know the hardest part is moving beyond averages. You can't show meaningful scope 3 reduction if hundreds or thousands of suppliers don't know their emissions in the first place, let alone report on how they're reducing them.

The majority of businesses are SMBs – they're short on time and money. Many of them want to understand their impact, but where do they start? While corporates may provide a 'toolkit' or a webinar, we know the real impact comes from leveraging their existing data, making it easy to turn that into carbon data and simple enough to share with you.

Sumday and Xero are leveraging AI, best in class platforms, education and support to make GHG accounting accessible.

Why your suppliers’ accounting software is your problem

The most persistent barrier to Scope 3 data quality has always been adoption at the SMB tier. Large enterprises invest in disclosure-grade systems like Sumday, their SMB suppliers are still understanding what scope 3 means.

The result is that Scope 3 inventories end up built on spend-based approximations and industry averages rather than actual supplier emissions data.

Averages mask reality. They also mask the suppliers who are genuinely improving, and the ones who aren't.

When your suppliers can measure, you can require. When they can disclose, you can compare. Embedding carbon accounting into the tools SMBs already use for their finances is exactly the kind of infrastructure-level shift that makes Scope 3 targets achievable rather than aspirational.

What this means if you’re managing a Scope 3 programme

Every Xero customer now has ongoing free access to carbon accounting tools, a Quick Estimate powered by their existing financial data, a sustainability profile, and carbon accounting education through Sumday Academy. For suppliers on higher Xero plans, full disclosure-grade Scope 1–3 accounting is available at 50% off.

This means the floor for supplier engagement has dropped significantly. Your procurement team no longer needs to ask a supplier to invest in new software. For many of them, the tool is already sitting inside their accounting workflow.

A few practical implications:

Supplier engagement. If you're building or refining a supplier data collection programme, a free Xero-integrated carbon accounting tool for SMBs changes what you can reasonably ask for. Emissions data from a credible platform is now within reach for a much larger proportion of your supply chain.

Procurement criteria. Minimum disclosure thresholds that felt premature twelve months ago are increasingly defensible today, particularly for Tier 1 suppliers running Xero-based accounting.

Your own disclosure. Under AASB S2 and aligned frameworks, auditors are specifically examining what proportion of your Scope 3 inventory is built on supplier-specific data versus approximations. An ecosystem that drives up SMB measurement capability directly improves your disclosure quality.

The longer view

The question for most large organisations is no longer whether to account for Scope 3. It's whether the data underpinning those accounts will hold up. Small businesses generate real emissions. Their supply chain relationships are real dependencies for the companies they serve. We're making it easier than ever to work together.

Supply Chain Engagement with Sumday

Small team? Don't know how you'll get the resources to run a proper supply chain engagement project? We've got your back. Sumday manages the whole process for you, with best in class support internally, education and software for your suppliers and an enterprise grade platform to collect and report.

Suppliers not on Xero? We've got special offers for all your suppliers to help them access the best tools for everything they need to run a sustainable business, both financially and environmentally.