A sustainability report is not a week in December. It is a year with four seasons of unglamorous work. This page is the calendar we use with clients in Georgia. Adjust it if your year-end is not 31 December; do not skip the seasons.
Late winter — scope
January and February are for entities, sites, and last year’s unfinished arguments. Who is in the boundary? Which leased boiler is ours? Did the parent send a new template? We freeze the entity list before anyone opens an invoice.
If you need a materiality workshop, this is the month for it. Deciding topics in August, after the chapters are written, is how reports become twelve thin essays.
Spring — inventory
March to May belong to Giorgi’s ledgers: electricity, gas, diesel, refrigerants, water, waste, headcount. Hotel groups wait for the heating season to finish so the bills are complete. Wineries wait until the cellar electricity for the previous vintage is in.
Site visits happen now, while the engineers still remember which meter was replaced. We photograph meter faces when the billing entity name does not match the legal entity on the report.
Summer — draft
June to August is narrative. Nino writes climate, water, people, and governance against the frozen workbook. Figures are drawn from those cells only. Management comments come in two rounds, not in a rolling chat.
If the annual report chapter is required, it is cut from this draft so the statutory document and the ESG pack do not disagree.
Autumn — sign-off
September and October are for the board. The briefing pack goes out a week before the meeting. Comments that change a number require a restatement note. The PDF is locked when the chair has signed, not when the designer is happy.
Banks and buyers often want the pack before year-end. Starting this cycle in November for a December covenant is how you get a two-day reading window and a tired finance director. We will still help if we can; we will also say the calendar is the risk.
What you own in each season
You own access to invoices and a person who can obtain them. You own the printer date. You own whether a restatement is published. We own the arithmetic, the methods note, and the refusal to print a chart we cannot source.
Commission this year’s report or ask for a conversation if you want the cycle mapped onto your actual year-end.