my customer's questionnaire is completely unsuitable for a small business like ours what now

Large CSRD questionnaire, small business: how to fill it in

Fill in what you know, and use the EFRAG SME basic module as a conversion table for the rest. Large customers often send a questionnaire that is based on their own CSRD reporting under Directive (EU) 2022/2464 — with scope 3 chains, double materiality and dozens of data points that for a non-listed enterprise are simply not all relevant or available. That is not your mistake. The VSME standard from EFRAG is specifically designed for this situation: a compact set of indicators that an SME can reasonably provide, and that large customers increasingly accept as fulfillment of their own demand for chain data.

In practice, this means: go through the questionnaire and mark for each question whether your customer actually means a VSME data point in different wording. Energy consumption, employee numbers, basic policy statements — those kinds of questions can often be traced back to a VSME item you already have or can easily fill in, such as how many employees the undertaking has. Questions that are clearly tailored to scope 3 chain analysis of a listed company — with supplier audits over multiple years — you can usually answer with "not applicable" or "not available at our level", without that being a shortcoming.

What this is based on

The basis is the EFRAG VSME itself, which is explicitly designed as a voluntary, proportionate standard for non-listed SMEs that are asked for CSRD-like data by larger chain partners; the CSRD Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2464) regulates the reporting obligation of the large enterprise itself, not that of the smaller supplier. A question that does not align with company size at all can also be tested against factual data that are established, such as the sector in which the enterprise operates — if a question simply does not align with that, that in itself is already an indication that the questionnaire was not written for your scale.