Key concepts
Reports, topics, disclosures, data points and materiality, and what each of them means in The Cards.
The Cards follows the structure of the reporting standards themselves. Five words carry most of the meaning.
Standard and version
A standard is the rulebook your report follows: ESRS or VSME. Each standard exists in versions, because the rules change over time and because the official content is published in several languages.
You choose the version when you create a report, and it is fixed for the life of that report, so the report always reflects the rules it was written under. When a new version is published you move to it by copying the report rather than by changing the existing one.
Report
A report covers one organisation for one reporting period. It has a name, a start and end date, a main language and a status.
A report is Active while you work on it, Finalised when it is done, and Archived when it is put away. Only an active report can be edited. Finalizing or archiving makes every field read-only, which is what makes a submitted report stable.
Topic
A topic is a top-level area of the standard: climate change, own workforce, business conduct, and so on. Topics group disclosures, and each topic shows its own progress and can have its own responsible person.
Disclosure
A disclosure is one requirement from the standard, the unit the standard itself calls a disclosure requirement. In The Cards it is a card: it has a title, an explanation of what is being asked for, and the data points that make up the answer.
Every disclosure is either material or not. Marking a disclosure as not material means your organisation has concluded it does not apply, and it is then excluded from the published report. Some disclosures are mandatory and cannot be marked immaterial.
Data point
A data point is a single question with a single answer: a number, a percentage, a date, a yes/no, a block of text or a small table. This is the level at which almost everything happens: you attach files to a data point, comment on a data point, ask the AI about a data point, and mark a data point as completed.
Materiality
Materiality decides what your report has to cover. Under CSRD it is a double assessment: whether a topic affects the world through your business, and whether it affects your business financially. The Cards gives you the place to record the conclusion, the material toggle on each disclosure, and to keep the reasoning behind it alongside the report it governs.
