Building Your Business’s Paydex Score

As a business owner, one of the things you should be interested about is your Paydex score. Do you clearly understand what a Paydex Score is? What role does it play in building your business credit? How can you build up an excellent business credit?

Understanding Your Business Credit Paydex Score

Paydex is a system developed by Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) - the leading credit reporting agency in the US. The Paydex Score is used to calculate a business’s credit history in terms of figures. For individuals, it is the equivalent of the FICO score. However, the Paydex system is only applicable for business entities.

Once you’ve registered with D&B, you also begin building your business’s credit history. Nevertheless, take note that not all lenders and merchants report to D&B. Thus, it is important to make sure that the lender or supplier you’re dealing with reports your payments to the credit bureaus.

Included in your business credit report would be your Paydex Score. This scoring system ranges from 0 to 100, with 90-100 considered as an excellent rating. A score of 80 and below is considered as good while a score of 70 and below indicates bad credit.

Obviously, a higher Paydex score would give a business the advantage of qualifying for loans or accounts that require excellent credit. Banks, lending companies, suppliers, merchants and investors all rely heavily on your business credit history when it comes to closing deals. Therefore, every business owner must be concerned about raising his business credit rating.

How to Raise Your Paydex Score

What factors affect your Paydex Score? Just like with your personal credit report, the timeliness of your payment plays a big role in building your business credit. If current funds aren’t enough to cover all your debts from different creditors, try to pay off your largest debts first to avoid incurring high interest rates and penalty charges. One or two late payments may not create a big damage to your score but constant late payments would certainly hurt your business credit.

What if it’s not possible for you to meet your payment due date because of a financial crisis? In this situation, the best thing to do is to contact your creditor right away and ask for an extension of your payment deadline. Explain your situation to your lender and ask for some adjustment in your payment terms. Most lenders would be willing to do so especially if your records show that you’ve been a good and trusted customer in the past.

The types of credit you have are also determining factors in attaining a high Paydex score. Acquiring a business loan or a business credit card can be great tools in building business credit. Remember, to build an excellent credit, you should make it a point to stay within your given credit limit and to submit your payments on time at all times.

Reviewing your business credit report from time to time is also advised. In case you may have some issues with the information contained in your report, you may contact D&B and request for an investigation.


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