What to Know About Business Credit

4 Dec

Most people are familiar with credit scores. Many people reading this probably know what their own score is and what factors affect it. What some people might not know is that your business has a similar score called a business credit score. This tells lenders how likely you are to repay them in a timely fashion. Your scores can be found at Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax and Experian.

Oddly enough, many business owners pay little attention to the importance of managing business credit well. Here are some important things to know about business credit and how to make sure your’s stays high.

Here are the Basics

Range: While your personal credit score can range from 300 to 850; business credit scores will generally range from 0 to 100.

Standardization: While consumer credit bureaus typically use the FICO algorithm and thus will all return very similar results, business credit score algorithms will vary from bureau to bureau.

Data: Typically, only the accounts under your company’s names will be taken into consideration. With that being said, for smaller businesses, many lenders will take the owners personal credit into consideration as well. It should be noted that many smaller lenders or creditors will not report their data to these bureaus and thus most payments that do show up on your report will be from large clients.

How to get one: While you have the right to one free consumer credit report from each of the three major bureaus every 12 months, you will have to pay one of the three major business bureaus if you want to see your business credit report

Who can get one: As long as they are willing to pay for it, anyone can see your business credit report.

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