May 2023 Release Notes

Created by Olivia Gibson, Modified on Sun, 7 Jul, 2024 at 2:59 PM by Olivia Gibson

Summary

We’ve added a Carbon "taxing" feature, allowing users to input a custom carbon price per tonne. Best-practice benchmarks from reputable sources are included to assist in setting the carbon cost.
Carbon pricing helps quantify environmental impact in financial terms, promoting sustainable travel choices and alignment with climate targets. The feature can be set up through the app and the set carbon cost will appear as a variable in API responses, as well as in CSV data exports.
Multiple methodologies for calculation (currently API only) are introduced, and detailed instructions can be found in the API documentation.
Enforceable SSO (Single Sign-On) is now available, providing an extra level of security by allowing customers to disable password-based authorization.
SAP Concur integration allows selective use of Concur Expense or Concur Travel segments, providing flexibility in choosing the travel category source data.

Spotlight on…

Knowledge base

We’re introducing our brand new knowledge base to all our customers and partners.

What it is

Think of it as a helpful sidekick, available 24/7, packed with useful articles, step-by-step guides, and answers to your frequently asked questions.

What it’s for

We know that sometimes you just want to find a quick answer or learn something new without having to reach out for assistance. That's why we created this knowledge base - to empower you to explore and learn at your own pace, while making sure you get accurate and up-to-date information.

Our goal is to make your experience even better, by offering you this resource whenever you need it. We're confident that you'll find it helpful. And, as always, we're here for you if you need any further assistance.

How to access it

You’ll see the button right in the top right of the app:

Just click the button and you’re in!

Carbon “taxing” - adding a carbon cost in the app and API

What it is

A new feature that allows users to input a custom carbon price per tonne. To further assist in this, we've included best-practice benchmarks from reputable sources including the journal Nature, and the U.S. and Canadian governments.

What it’s for

We understand that carbon pricing is a strategic approach many businesses are adopting to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. By attaching a tangible cost to the carbon emissions associated with corporate travel, organisations can now more precisely quantify environmental impact in financial terms. This encourages more sustainable travel choices, facilitating alignment with environmental commitments and climate targets.

How to use it

Read about it on the Thrust Carbon knowledge base (requires a Thrust Calculator login). Once you’ve set it up through the app, your set carbon cost will also appear as a variable in API responses.

Multiple methodologies (currently API only)

For those interested in using the new feature that allows specifying a particular calculation methodology via API requests, we invite you to explore our comprehensive API documentation. This resource provides detailed instructions and examples to help you fully utilise this functionality. You can find the documentation here.

Rundown

Updates & New features

Enforceable SSO

We have long offered our customers the ability to implement SSO for the Thrust Calculator. We now allow them to disable password-based authorisation, for that extra level of security

SAP Concur integration: selective use of Concur Expense or Concur Travel segments

This allows our SAP Concur integration customers to select which travel category they want to take from Concur Expense and which from Concur Travel. This is important particularly but not only for the Hotel category:

Some prefer to take Hotel segments source data from Concur Travel due to the greater number of calculation parameters the Concur Travel segment offers
Others prefer to take from Concur Expense because it means you get close to 100% visibility of all segments, even if you sacrifice some of the granularity.

Just speak to your Thrust Carbon customer success manager if you’d like to explore using the SAP Concur integration.

Bug fixes

Summary	Description	Fix
Report haul type distance ranges	In the section of the report analysing flight emissions by haul type, short-haul flights were defined as having a distance of 300-2,700 km. In fact, our methodology defines short-haul as 300-3,700 km.	Updated the report text to reflect the true calculation logic.
Custom calculation segment label was compulsory	Adding single segments with a custom CO2 amount offers the user to label this segment, but says that labelling it is “optional”. Leaving the field blank was resulting in failure to add the segment.	Changed the form validation to allow a blank Label value.

What’s next?

Budgets reporting

Corporate carbon budgeting in business travel is crucial as it aids organisations in tracking, reducing, and accounting for emissions related to business travel, thereby playing a significant role in overall sustainability efforts and the achievement of corporate climate goals. Our budgets tooling is used by a number of our customers, is very sophisticated and can be a critical enabler for your carbon reduction plan. To complete the picture, we will supplement our beautiful carbon reports suite with content summarising current performance against allocated budgets.

What we didn’t finish in time for this edition

A dedicated “personal car mileage” segment type

Some travellers choose to drive their own vehicle for business purposes. The associated emissions are still reportable within Scope 3 Category 6, but it's important for analytical purposes to capture separately from hire car segments. With this addition, customers will be able to tag personal car mileage as exactly that, and Travel Managers/Sustainability Managers will have a new level of detail in their reporting.