

Regardless of how long you’ve been in business, building and maintaining good business credit is a critical part of accessing borrowed capital to fuel business growth and fund other business needs. Your business credit profile includes detailed information about your business credit accounts—including utilities, credit cards, banks, suppliers, and other creditors, along with other information about your business.
The three major business credit reporting bureaus, Dunn & Bradstreet, Equifax, and Experian all use different scores and focus on slightly different aspects of your business credit profile. While all three bureaus look at business-to-business data, bank data, and information pulled from the public record, they specialize in different parts of your credit profile.
Dunn & Bradstreet
After years of monitoring business credit (since 1941), Dunn & Bradstreet’s credit score is primarily based on how a business interacts with its vendors (trade data). They look at how delinquent a business might be when paying their vendors and apply a 100-point score they call the PAYDEX® score to demonstrate how timely a business pays their bills and to help predict how likely they will in the future.
Equifax
Equifax is the platform that transforms data collected by the Small Business Finance Exchange (SBFE) into a business credit report. The SBFE is where most banks report loan data, so the Equifax report is primarily a reflection of how a small business owner makes credit card payments or repays a small business loan or a line of credit.
Experian
The Experian business credit report uses a 100-point score like D&B, but their focus is not on trade data. They also collect bank data and information available in the public record to create the Experian credit reports many lenders use to evaluate business credit risk and a business’ detailed financial payment trends.
There is no quick fix for a less-than-perfect credit profile and it takes time for a new business to build business credit, but here are five things you can start doing now that will help you build a strong foundation:
Like your personal credit score, your business credit score is a precious asset, which over time will help you access the capital you need to fuel growth and fund working capital. The first step is to know your score; the second is to implement the business practices that will help you build a great business credit profile.
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