Equifax® is one of the Big 3 consumer credit bureaus, and it’s one of the three major business credit bureaus as well. Equifax® credit scores are used by lenders, insurance companies, and other businesses to help them make better decisions. 

As a small business owner, you’ll want to check, build, and monitor your personal and business credit with Equifax®. Here, we’ll explain how to understand and optimize Equifax® business credit scores.  

If you’re not familiar with business credit, here are a few reasons why this is important. Good business credit can help your small business qualify for a small business loan or line of credit, or get higher credit limits. A strong business credit history may help your business save money with lower interest rates. It can also make it easier to get payment terms (such as net-30 accounts) with suppliers and vendors.  

Good credit may make it easier for your business to open new accounts with utility companies, cell phone providers, telcos, or other service providers. It may make your business more attractive to clients or potential business partners. And your business may qualify for lower insurance premiums with a good business credit rating. 

All those potential benefits are reasons to check your business credit scores and reports, and to take time to build and maintain good credit.

What Is Factored Into an Equifax Business Credit Report?

Most Equifax® business credit reports are purchased by companies that want to mitigate risk when doing business with another business. The report is geared toward those companies and what they need to know. 

If you are checking your own Equifax® business credit report–we’ll explain how in a minute–your report may look a little different than what we describe here. 

Company information

This section includes details such as business name, address, tax id, business structure (corporation or LLC), when it was established, number of employees, industry codes (SIC and/or NAICS codes). 

An Equifax® identification number (EFX ID) will also be listed. This is a 9-digit number created by Equifax® and used to track the business. 

Tip: When you start building business credit, it is helpful to build your foundation to make sure these details represent your business. Read Nav’s Checklist to Make Your Business Legit to learn how. 

Alerts and Inquiries

Companies that purchase credit reports from Equifax® about other businesses will get alerts if there are key differences between the company they inquired about and the credit report that was supplied. 

Different sections of the report will list how many inquiries are on file, and when those inquiries occurred. It won’t list the names of companies that inquired. 

Companies that purchase these reports also get information that helps them understand whether they are looking at the credit file of the correct business. 

Public Records

A public record is information that is recorded by a public agency. In the case of credit reports, that typically means information filed with the courts such as lawsuits, liens (UCC filings and/or tax liens), judgments, and bankruptcy.

In addition to bankruptcy, liens, or judgments on file for the business, this section will also include business registration information obtained from the Secretary of State or other sources. This can include the registered name of the business, the incorporation date and state where incorporated, the incorporation status, and the contact name, title and address for the business.

Days Beyond Terms

This section summarizes payment history, the single most important factor that influences business credit scores. Business credit reports often use “Days Beyond Terms” (DBT) to describe how many days beyond the due date a payment was made. For example, if your terms with a vendor is “net-30,” and you pay on day 34, the account will be reported as 4 DBT.

In the case of Equifax® Commercial reports, this section displays the dollar-weighted average days beyond terms on non-financial accounts within the last 12 months from the date of the inquiry. It’s also worth noting that Equifax® provides the average days beyond terms for the inquired businesses industry, and for all businesses (nationally) in the Equifax® commercial database. This helps the company reviewing the report to evaluate how that business compares to others. 

Payment Index

Remember that payment history is very important to lenders and other companies that purchase business credit reports. Equifax® also includes their Payment Index, which helps summarize payment history with a “dollar weighted indicator of a businesses payment performance based on the most recently reported non-financial payment experiences in the Equifax® commercial database.” Here’s how Equifax suggests this be interpreted:

Payment Index	Days Past Due
90+	Pays as agreed
80-89	1-30 days past due
60-79	31-60 days past due
40-59	61-90 days past due
20-39	91-120
1-19	12-+ days past due

Source: Equifax® Business Training Guide

Scores

Lenders and companies that purchase credit reports from Equifax® can also purchase credit scores. We’ll talk about those in more detail in a moment. 

Report Highlights

Equifax® will summarize and feature information about the businesses’ credit history in this section. It may include:

• How long the company has actively had business credit accounts
• How many accounts have been opened/closed/updated
• Delinquencies (new delinquencies, non-charge offs and charge offs, including amount)
• Most severe status
• Single highest credit extended
• Total current credit exposure and highest credit exposure
• Number of inquiries

It will also summarize and analyze open accounts, with:

• Total/median/average balance
• Current portion of balance due
• Delinquent non-charged off accounts
• Total past due and at risk balance

Tradelines

If the business has non-financial credit accounts listed on their Equifax® business credit reports, the report will go into detail about these tradelines, providing a history that may include the balance, amount past due, payment due, and other relevant details. 

What Are the Key Factors That Impact My Equifax Business Credit Risk Score?

Payment history is the key factor that impacts credit scores, whether we’re talking about business or personal credit. Paying on time helps build good credit, while paying late hurts credit scores. 

With business credit, there’s another common reason why credit scores may be low: lack of accounts reporting. It’s not unusual for business owners to discover they have a low business credit score, not because they have paid late, but because they don’t have accounts that report payment history. We’ll talk about that in more detail in a moment. 

What can help business credit scores	What can hurt business credit scores
Accounts that report positive payments to business credit	Lack of accounts that report payment history
Paying on time	Paying late or defaulting
Keeping balances low	High credit utilization
Resolving liens and judgments	Unpaid liens or judgments
Low-risk industry	High-risk industry

What Is Considered a Good Equifax Business Credit Score?

The question, “What is a good business credit score?” is something of a trick question. There’s no single number that represents a “good” credit score, whether we’re talking about personal credit or business credit. 

Lenders or other companies have a choice of which credit score(s) they want to purchase. When they do, they also decide for themself what credit score is considered “good” based on their specific goals. 

When it comes to business credit, there’s another twist. Unlike Equifax® Risk Scores, consumer credit scores that range from 300–850, Equifax® produces several credit scores for use in business, each with its own credit score range:

Business Delinquency Financial Score^TM

This score uses financial services and trade payment data to predict the likelihood of severe, charge-off or bankruptcy on financial services accounts.

Score range: 101 – 715

Business Delinquency Score^TM 

This score also uses financial services and trade payment data to predict the likelihood of severe delinquency (91 days or greater), charge-off or bankruptcy within the next 12 months. 

Score range: 101 – 662

Pro tip: Both the Business Delinquency Score and Business Delinquency Financial Score offer the option to blend principal (consumer) credit information with commercial credit data. While consumer and business credit data are kept separately, Equifax® is able to access both datasets to create a blended score. 

Business Failure Score™ 

This score predicts the likelihood of business failure through either formal or informal bankruptcy within the next 12 months. 

Score range: 1000 – 1604

Equifax® OneScore for Commercial 

This score predicts the likelihood of a financial account becoming severely delinquent, 91 or more days past due, including major derogatory events and bankruptcies within 24 months following origination to any provider of services on financial institutions. 

Score range: 300–660

Business Failure Risk Class™ 

The Business Failure Risk Class is a high-level representation of the Equifax® Business Failure Risk Scoring System. Businesses are grouped into 5 risk classes ranging from 1 to 5. It is based on the Business Failure Risk Score.

Range: 1–5

Unless otherwise noted, a higher score equates to lower risk. With several of these scores, a “0” indicates there is a bankruptcy on file. 

How Can I Improve My Equifax Score?

Whether you are talking about an Equifax® consumer credit score, or a business credit score from Equifax®, the number one thing you can do to improve your credit score is to pay accounts on time and keep balances low. 

If you don’t have accounts that report, or few accounts that report, you may need to get additional credit accounts that report to help build your credit rating. 

If your goal is to build business credit with Equifax®, this may mean getting trade accounts (also called “non financial accounts”) such as supplier credit or net-30 accounts; or financial accounts, which can include small business loans or lines of credit. 

Not having many accounts that appear on your credit report can result in what’s called a “thin file.” With too few accounts reporting, it can be hard to build a strong credit score because the credit bureau simply doesn’t have enough payment information to analyze.

If you’re wondering how to establish business credit with Equifax® or other credit bureaus, there are several ways to do that:

1. Get tradelines. Trade accounts (also called “non financial accounts”) include such as supplier credit or vendor credit. Suppliers or vendors may allow you to pay for things later. A net-30 account, for example, means the payment is due in 30 days. Find vendors that report to business credit here. 
2. Get business credit cards. Business credit cards often report to major business credit bureaus. (Not all will report directly to Equifax®, though. Some may report to the Small Business Financial Exchange which then makes that information available to partner bureaus including Equifax®.) Here’s more information on credit cards that report to business credit. 
3. Get Nav Prime. Nav submits payments for Nav Prime to major business credit bureaus monthly.  
4. Get business financing. Some small business loans or lines of credit will be reported directly to Equifax®. Some lenders will report to the SBFE, which then makes this information available to Equifax® and other bureaus. 

Once you get accounts that report, paying on time is key to building and keeping good credit scores. 

Why Is My Equifax Business Score So Low?

There are three main reasons you may find your credit scores are low:

1. Your business credit report lists no or very few accounts with an active payment history.
2. Your business credit report lists derogatory information, such as late payments, judgments, unpaid liens etc. 
3. Your business has excessive debt. 

Note that Equifax® does not report information from collection agencies on business credit reports. A creditor may list that an account is collections, though. 

How Often Do Equifax Business Credit Scores Update?

Credit scores are created when they are requested. When information in your credit report changes (for example, a new payment, balance, or lien, is reported), your credit scores may change. 

If you are using Nav to check your business credit, reports and scores are updated monthly when you log in. 

How Can I Check and Monitor My Equifax Business Credit Score Online?

You can check and monitor your business credit reports and scores—including your Equifax® business credit—with Nav.  

With Nav Prime™, you’ll get business credit scores* and Detailed Credit Reports from two leading business credit reporting agencies: Equifax® and Experian™, along with business credit scores—Equifax® Business Delinquency Score® and Experian™ Intelliscore Plus^SM V2. 

Understand what information companies are reporting about your business, and view both business and personal credit in one dashboard. 

In the Credit Health hub, see aggregate trends in your credit, key factors having the most impact on your scores, and keep track of new progress you’ve made. 

You’ll also get details on public records, including UCC filings, that can directly and indirectly impact financing or other opportunities. 

In addition, Nav Cash Flow Health makes it easy to monitor your cash flow across all your business credit reports. Understand your business financial health and make better decisions. 

Read: How to Check Business Credit Scores and Reports

FAQs

Can I check my Equifax business credit with CreditKarma?

CreditKarma allows you to check your personal credit, but there is no CreditKarma for business credit at this time. 

How do I check my Dun & Bradstreet credit report?

Dun & Bradstreet is another major business credit agency. Learn how to check your Dun & Bradstreet credit report and get a DUNS number. 

*Nav provides access to Experian™ Intelliscore PlusSM V2, Equifax® Business Delinquency Score®, TransUnion®VantageScore® 3.0, and Experian™ VantageScore® 3.0. VantageScore is a registered trademark of VantageScore, LLC.

**Nav Technologies, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. The Nav Prime Charge Card is issued by Thread Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa cards are accepted. See Cardholder Terms for additional details.