Carbon Cred User Guide

Carbon Cred App User Guide

The Carbon Cred app allows you to earn money for choosing lower emission forms of transportation between your home and your workplace.

The app is available from both major app stores:
- Carbon Cred – Apple App Store (iOS)
- Carbon Cred – Google Play (Android)
From the app store of your choice you can install Carbon Cred as you would any other app.

On first opening the app you will see the login screen. Since you don’t have an account yet, choose the “Sign Up” link at the bottom.

To create a new account you will be asked for the following information:
- First/Last name
- Work email – Use your corporate/company email address.
- Personal email – This is a backup email for account resetting if needed. Use any non-work email you have access to.
- Password – You will be asked to create and confirm a secure password.
- Home address – We need to know your home address for accurate tracking of trips. As you type, a list of addresses will appear, and you can select yours.
- Work address – Provide the address of your workplace. If you sometimes work from home and sometimes from an office, use the office address. If you always work from home, trip tracking and payments are not available for you at this time.
- Vehicle information – We need to know the make/model/year of your vehicle to establish an emissions baseline to measure against. The app only supports a single vehicle right now, so if you have more than one you should enter whichever one you use most often.
After registering you will be returned to the login screen and asked to verify your email before continuing. We’ll send you a verification email to ensure we have the correct email for you since that’s where we’ll be sending your payouts.

The email will provide a link to click, and after that you can log in to the app for the first time. Note: Check your spam folders if you don’t receive the email.

There are two methods for taking trips with Carbon Cred:
- Manual – You start and stop trips yourself when you leave/arrive.
- Automatic – Set it and forget it. The app will detect travels between your work and home locations and record the trips for you.
We recommend using Automatic, but you can select whichever mode you prefer. It’s also easy to switch between them.

You’ll want to use the app anytime you’re taking a lower-emission trip to or from your workplace. From the main screen you can select which kind of trip you are taking:
- Zero Emissions – Walking, running, biking, etc.
- Public Transit – Bus, train, subway, or other public transit system
You should only start and stop trips from either your home or workplace address. Even if a transit stop is some distance away, you should still start tracking the trip from the moment you leave work or home. We’ll improve tracking in the future, but currently a trip will not register as valid unless it starts and stops from the work or home addresses you set.
The app will ask you for location and tracking permissions the first time you start a trip. This is necessary for verifying your lower-emission travels. You’ll need to give the app all requested permissions for it to work. Just so you know, we collect less information than your phone already tracks and we keep it private.

If you need to adjust your Permissions in the future, or accidentally selected the wrong setting, please see our how-to on Location & Data Permission Settings.
Once you start a trip it will track your travels in the background and you can use your phone and other apps normally during your trip.
End your trip when you reach your destination. The app will make calculations and provide statistics on the trip and an estimate of how many Carbon Cred were earned.

From the main screen, choose “Enable automatic trip logging” or visit the Settings screen.

The app will then ask you for location and tracking permissions. This is necessary for verifying your lower-emission travels. You’ll need to give the app all requested permissions for it to work.

That’s it! Automatic trip logging is now enabled and your trips will be recorded for you. You don’t have to be on the Carbon Cred app for it to work, but it does need to be active in the background.
After a few days your phone may ask again if you want to continue allowing location tracking permissions. Go ahead and approve it.
If you need to adjust your app Permissions, or accidentally selected the wrong setting, please see our how-to on Location & Data Permission Settings.
If you want to return to Manual mode, visit the Settings screen and turn off “Log Trips Automatically.”

You can find your Cred balance on the main screen, or on the Balance & Sell screen.

Selling Cred is enabled when your balance is 10 Cred or higher.
When you’ve reached 10+ Cred, you can choose to sell your Cred and receive Canadian Dollars. Your entire balance is sold at once – partial selling is not yet supported.
When you complete the sale, a payout will be sent as an e-Transfer to the work email address you entered when registering. Please allow a few business days for the transfer to arrive.
The transfer is sent by Carbon Cred, but the offset carbon from your lower-emission trips is actually being purchased by your company, as part of your organization’s commitment to positive environmental practices.

If you have questions, problems, or bugs to report, you can reach the Carbon Cred team at support@carboncred.com. We welcome your opinions – good or bad, small or large.
For information on our data use, please refer to our Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, and End User License Agreement.