TurboTax-like Carbon Accounting Platform
Ryan Miller, VP & GM of Private Markets at Persefoni, on building an ERP for carbon
This is a product design choice to turn carbon accounting from a consultant project into a guided software workflow. Instead of hiring specialists to gather fuel, electricity, shipping, and materials data and then map each line to emissions factors, Persefoni is trying to package those steps into a self serve flow that a small business can complete with the same kind of prompt driven experience that made tax filing software mainstream.
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The pain point is real. Carbon accounting has historically meant collecting data across facilities, travel, procurement, and logistics, then converting each activity type into CO2e with different formulas. In the interview, the cited cost for a large company was roughly $490,000 to $650,000 including labor, which makes manual approaches too expensive for the mid market and SMBs.
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The workflow Persefoni is simplifying is more like bookkeeping than like buying offsets. The core job is assembling company activity data, applying emissions factors, and producing an auditable inventory under standards like the GHG Protocol. That is why the company compares itself more to QuickBooks, NetSuite, and SAP than to a marketplace or consulting shop.
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This also explains the market split in the carbon stack. Persefoni positions carbon accounting as the system of record, while partners like Patch handle offset procurement afterward. Peers like Watershed compete on the accounting layer too, but the strategic prize is owning the first screen where a business measures its footprint and returns every month or quarter to update it.
The next phase is carbon software becoming an entry level finance tool for suppliers and smaller brands, not just a specialist system for big enterprises. As regulation and buyer demands spread through supply chains, the winners will be the products that make first time measurement fast, cheap, and routine, then expand from reporting into reduction planning and ongoing operating decisions.