Recession Survivors

Essential Business Credit Reports

Search business credit reports before engaging in any corporate relationship. Search an onlinedatabase of more than 27 million credit-active businesses to learn the creditworthiness of your suppliers, customers or partners. Get instant access to business credit reports of your key accounts.

Why You Should Monitor the Business Credit Rating of Vendors and Suppliers

An objective, accurate business credit report provides access to critical information needed for making informed financial business decisions about whom you do business with and at what price.

A good business credit report provides

• Business background information - Decide whether to do business with a company
  
• Comprehensive financial information- Assess business risk of extending terms and credit levels
  
• Credit risk factors - Avoid surprises from current customers when you review them for credit increases
  
• Banking, trade and collection history - Know what to expect based on an account's historical business practices
  
• Past liens, judgments, business registrations and bankruptcies - Determine whether you can confidently make a credit decision concerning a new customer or if further investigation is needed
  
• Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filings - Your credit position relative to other creditor positions that may already be in place

Business credit reports form the basis for decisions other businesses make about you. By using a convenient, online business credit reporting service from Experian, you can make sure that data in your business credit report is accurate, which will enable the following financial decisions:

• How much business credit a supplier will extend to you
• What interest rates you will pay
• How much money lending institutions will loan you
• How your customers view you
• What your insurance premiums will be
• The level of potential investor interest

Why Monitor Other Companies' Credit Reports?

By utilizing an objective business credit reporting service to monitor a partner or supplier's company credit report, you can discover the following in advance:

• The status of prospective customers' payment practices
• Existing clients' business conditions
• Suppliers' historical relationships with others
• Notifications about changes to suppliers' or customers' business credit reports
• What your competitors are doing
• Other financially pertinent details

Having immediate access to financial stability data can mean the difference between your profit and loss in each business venture.

Minimizing business risk

Receiving updates about the credit status of key business relationships is important. Setup your accounting department to track key account relationships and monitor issues that indicate when a business may be headed for trouble, such as:

• Learning if a key supplier is planning to go out of business
  
• Knowing when a key account begins to get behind on payments
  
• Discovering if your own credit report contains errors that can negatively affect your cash flow position

Learn more about tracking business credit history.