Business traffic

Pay attention to

• Enter the annual mileage for every means of conveyance.
• It is more accurate to enter the quantity of fuel for motorized vehicles, than the mileage.
• Some means of transport can only be filled in in kilometers such as public transport, bicycle and plane, declared kilometers.

Note: enter or the quantity of fuel or the mileage of a vehicle. So do not enter both, because in that case the environmental burden of these vehicles are doubled.

Company or leased cars

Choose to:

• Fill in the total of fuel or kilometers (including commuter traffic and private use) as business traffic (obligatory for SKAO CO₂-Performance Ladder)
• Divide fuel or kilometers into business travel and commuter traffic by estimating the commuter traffic and filling in the rest (eventually without private use) as business traffic.

In case of SKAO CO₂-Performance Ladder it is important to fill in business traffic in liters fuels (instead of kilometers). Except for the invoiced business trips with private cars, enter these in kilometers.

Methods for collecting the data

There are several methods to measure or estimate these data. You may have kilometer data for part of the business traffic and fuel data for another part. Clarify in your notes which information is stored where (see Enter data).

1. Ask for an annual total
   Ask for an annual total with the lease company and/or fuel supplier and/or rental car company and/or car sharing company and/or company subscriptions (for instance the business card of the Dutch Railways (NS)
2. Ask for an annual total of the fuel
   Ask for an annual total of the fuel taken or kilometers driven with the lease company or the fuel supplier.
3. Deduce from the fuel costs total
   If bookkeeping has an item for fuel costs, this may be used to convert the costs into liters of fuel based on the average price per liter (see for instance CBS Statline).
4. Take down the mileage of the vehicles
   By taking down the mileage of each vehicle at least at the beginning (or end) of every year, the number of kilometers driven per year can be calculated.
5. Deduce from declarations for business travel
   Ask the salary administration department or the financial department for a survey of the kilometers and/or expenses claimed. Please note that the declarations for public transport and vehicles may well be handled separately for tax purposes. If only the costs are registered, the mileage can be determined by dividing the number of kilometers by the reimbursed costs per kilometer. The rules of thumb are:
• bus/tram: € 0.28/ km
• train: € 0.19/ km (with an average travelling distance of 55 km)
• car: preferably use the travelling costs allowance that is applied in your company. If you do not know how high it is, you can apply the maximum tax-free travelling allowance of € 0.19/km

Please note that a company car (leased, self-administered or private/business) on average drives 35,900 km a year. 25% of these kilometers are business-related. The most important reason for trips is commuter traffic at 50% (over 17,600 km a year). The private use comes to 25% of the kilometers driven, that is over 9,100 km a year. (Source: Zakenauto in Nederland, Nationaal zakenauto onderzoek, 2019)

Please note that the key indicators for business traffic such as (km business traffic/fte) are based on the environmental data entered, instead of on the costs. That is to say that if you enter only the expenses without making an estimate of the mileage involved, the item will be counted as zero kilometers, and so the indicator will show a (much) lower number.

Electric cars

Electric cars are often charged at several places: at home, at loading points en route and at the company. This makes it more difficult to monitor than consumption of vehicle fuel. The trick is:

• Keep it simple, sometimes something can be estimated or neglected.
• Prevent double counting, which is particularly acute for charging at the company.

Available Items for completing electric cars

• Electricity
  • Of which for charging vehicles (green electricity)
  • Of which for charging vehicles (grey electricity)
• Business travel
  • Home charging electric vehicles (green power)
  • Home charging electric vehicles (grey electricity)
  • Car electrical consumption (kWh)
  • Of which green electricity (kWh)
• Freight
  • Road electrical consumption (kWh)
  • Of which green electricity (kWh) road

Charging vehicles in (public) charging stations.

If your employees ‘fill up’ with a keycard you will get an overview of the electricity bought.
Enter this by:

• ’Business traffic – passenger electric consumption (kWh) and / or
• ’Goods transport – road electric and / or
• The corresponding “of which green power” items.

Charging at the own company with keycards

If the charging points at your own company work with keycards, the kWh of this charging is included in the keycard-overview. To avoid double counting the electricity supplied to the load point should not also be counted via “purchased electricity”. For this you can use the two items in the theme electricity:

• Of which for charging vehicles (green electricity)
• Of which for charging vehicles (grey electricity)

Charging at the own company without keycards

If the charging points at your own business do not operate with keycards, you can choose:

• Leave it included in electricity. Then you can leave it as is.
• Or transfer charging the vehicle at the company to commercial traffic / freight. For this you measure / estimate how much power is used for charging and enter that number in the following items:
  • Electricity – of which for charging vehicles (green or grey electricity depending on your contract)
  • Business travel – Car electricity (kWh) (addition in kWh of charging fit)
  • Business travel – of which green electricity (kWh) (if your company has green power)
• If a part is used for charging freight wagons fill in that section to ‘goods transport – road electric’.

Home charging for business travel

There are two separate items that you can use:

• Home charging electric vehicles (green electricity)
• Home charging electric vehicles (grey electricity)

Our advice is to fill it only if:

• The employees receive an allowance, because the amount is not known whether
• An important share of CO2 emissions / environmental impact of the company (eg self-employed, this may be the case).

Former items (for those who entered electric vehicles before Aug 2015)

Users started before September 2015 may have used two items we are ‘phasing out’:

• Electric cars (km) and
• Van electric (km)
  These old items do not include the environmental impact of the electricity used, but they correct the indicators. Our advice is to transfer them to the new items:
• Calculate the number of kWh (eg 1 kWh / 6km) of the two items together.
• Go to fine-tuning in Business travel and select the item “Car electrical consumption (kWh)” and possibly “whose green electricity (kWh)”.
• Go back to fill in the number of kWh (cars plus vans).
• Remove the old items via fine-tuning.