Sustainability Information for Small Businesses: The Opportunity for Practitioners

This report examines the importance of readily available, relevant, and reliable sustainability information for achieving better-informed decisions, enhanced strategic and risk management, and more thorough and valuable reporting to external stakeholders. It also highlights a range of emerging services that practitioners can provide to their clients, including advisory services, reporting, agreed-upon procedures (AUP) engagements, and assurance services.

Small businesses are critical to achieving sustainable outcomes for economies, the environment and society. They can find significant advantages from establishing (or enhancing) processes, systems and controls for identifying, measuring, and analyzing sustainability information. This can include improved efficiencies and performance, as well as differentiation from competitors. Small businesses are also likely to be subject to sustainability-related reporting information requests from a diverse range of stakeholders, including large companies, banks, and suppliers—if they are not already. 

This publication was developed with advice and guidance from the IFAC Small and Medium Practices (SMP) Advisory Group and builds on the Advisory Group’s work on practice transformation.