The Mapping Your Business Goals to the Relevant UN SDGs toolkit was published by ACCA and Profit Impact in June 2022. It is a practical toolkit designed to help SMEs and finance/accounting professionals understand how to align business goals with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and use them as a framework for sustainability strategy, reporting, and stakeholder engagement.
Key insights:
SMEs represent around 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide, so their role is essential in achieving sustainability goals.
The toolkit explains that the SDGs can help businesses reduce risk, improve reputation, attract talent and investment, and create clearer value for customers and stakeholders.
It presents SDG alignment as a principles-based approach, not a rigid checklist, allowing each business to choose the goals most relevant to its context, sector, and impact.
It proposes a five-step SDG journey: understand SDG priorities, identify where the business has the biggest impact, align with external needs and purpose, choose relevant SDGs, and set targets.
For accounting and finance firms, the toolkit suggests focusing on SDG 8 while also considering SDGs 4, 5, 10, 13, and 16.
It emphasizes that sustainability should be embedded into business ethics, governance, operations, supply chains, and reporting.
The toolkit concludes that once goals and targets are identified, businesses should use integrated reporting to communicate financial, social, and environmental impacts transparently.
