CBAM software for exporters. The number your importer files, with the arithmetic attached.

CBAM is installation-level. The declaration names the specific plant where the goods were made, so the software has to hold each production site as its own installation with its own boundary, its own fuels, electricity and process emissions, and its own reporting period. A company-wide average is not an answer an importer can use.

• One installation per production site, even when two share an address.
• Fuel combustion and process emissions kept as separate lines.
• Electricity consumption with the factor applied to it and where that factor came from.
• Production recorded in tonnes, month by month.

Inside the installation, emissions are attributed to production processes, and each process to the CBAM goods it produces, identified by CN code. The same product made by two routes carries two different numbers, so the production route has to be recorded with the good. CBAM software that only stores a total per site cannot produce a specific figure per good.

Complex goods carry the embedded emissions of the precursors that went into them: billets in aluminium profiles, crude steel in wire, clinker in cement. The software has to take the precursor quantities and their own specific embedded emissions into the calculation.

• Purchased precursors use the supplier’s actual data when you have it, and a Commission default value when you do not.
• Precursors made in the EU count as zero embedded emissions, but their quantities are still reported.
• Precursors of unknown origin fall back on the separate defaults the Commission publishes for that case (Annex IV to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2621).

The output is the specific embedded emissions of each good, in tCO₂e per tonne. Direct emissions cover combustion and process emissions in production, including heat produced outside the installation. Indirect emissions cover the electricity consumed.

Which part your importer pays on depends on the sector: iron and steel, aluminium and hydrogen are charged on direct emissions only; cement and fertilisers are declared with direct and indirect emissions. Good CBAM software keeps both visible either way, because buyers outside the CBAM calculation often ask for the full figure.

Default values are country- and year-specific and carry a mark-up, so the software has to know which default applies to which precursor, for which year, and say plainly where a default is standing in for actual data. Then it has to produce what the importer and the verifier work from:

• The operator’s emissions report — the Commission publishes a recommended Excel template whose Summary_Communication sheet carries what the declarant needs.
• A calculation trace per good, so the accredited verifier can follow each figure to its inputs. The first site visit by the verifier is, in principle, always physical.
• Evidence of any carbon price effectively paid in the country of origin, if your importer will claim the deduction.