Proactively Reporting Business Credit

When applying for a loan, a line of credit or certain services from various financial institutions and companies, your business credit serves as a bellwether to help these companies determine what, if anything, you qualify for and directly influences the amount of money or quality of service offered. For this reason, it is important for you to stay on top of your business credit, and frequently ensure that the information reported is timely, accurate and complete, especially before making major purchases or applying for further financing.

Dun & Bradstreet is the credit reporting agency that you'll want to focus almost all of your attention on. While there are other agencies out there, such as Experian, D&B is the biggest one and likely the first one that companies in the United States are going to turn to when determining your credit-worthiness. The biggest problem with D&B, however, is that businesses are not absolutely required to report all information to D&B or any other credit agency. One of the worst problems that arises from this is the tendancy for businesses to always report the bad things, such as late payments, and fail to report the good things, such as early and on time payments. Your score with D&B could be reflective of all of the late bills you've paid in the past year, but only carry half of the on-time and early bills you've paid, significantly reducing your score from what it should be.

To ensure that this does not happen to you, it is important to keep abreast of your D&B Paydex score. Check on it frequently; not only on the score its self, but on the companies that are (and aren't) reporting your payments to D&B. If you see data that is incorrect or if you don't see anything at all from a company that you have payed a bill to on time or early, be proactive and call that company. Persist and make absolutely sure that the company will report the information to D&B as soon as possible, so that your company's credit profile will be accurate and reflective of your business.