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Are you trying to get your hands on a government contract? Are you attempting to secure the best terms for a loan? Are you scouting for new business partners to join your journey? Whatever you are trying to do, a high-quality Dun & Bradstreet Rating can enable you to take your business to new heights so you can sit atop of cloud 9.
Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) is the oldest credit bureau in the US and so, only deals in business credit and is usually the one-stop-shop credit agency for the federal government and various other high-volume lenders. However, how do you actually get your D&B scores?
As you might be aware, business credit operates differently from personal credit. Unfortunately, you are not entitled to a free business credit report every year, nor are lenders obligated to let you know if they did not accept you due to your business credit score (or lack of). It can be a pretty difficult task for many businesses to decipher their business credit, especially for a multi-faceted rating like Dun & Bradstreet’s.
The credit rating process with Dun & Bradstreet can be split into two separate scores which lenders have at their disposal to evaluate a business’s creditworthiness. What are these two ratings? They are the Dun & Bradstreet rating and the D&B PAYDEX score. Both of these ratings work together to tell lenders about a specific business’s credit risk.
As a business, your Dun & Bradstreet Rating is generated based on the financial information you provide to them. The more you give (and the more accurate it is) the easier it will be for Dun & Bradstreet to award you a relevant rating.
This score is there to estimate your business’s creditworthiness by taking into account the number of employees you have, how long you have been in business, your credit history and your company’s overall net worth. It provides lenders and potential business partners with a very clear and quick way of establishing profitable options and any risks that aren’t worth taking due to bad debt and poor cash flow.
In line with the above rating, Dun & Bradstreet also creates a PAYDEX score to rate your business’s creditworthiness further.
Even though the D&B rating sounds far more like a traditional credit score, the Dun & Bradstreet PAYDEX better represents what people imagine when they think about credit ratings. This score does not take your employee number, business size or total capital, instead it focuses on how quickly and efficiently your business pays back lenders.
Now, there are a few steps to acquiring your Dun & Bradstreet Rating and PAYDEX score.
To start with, you, as a business owner, will need to create your free D-U-N-S Number. Your PAYDEX score does not even exist until this number is generated for you. What is this number exactly? Well, it is a nine-digit business identifier that is assigned to you when Dun & Bradstreet have decided that you are unique from the other companies in their Data Cloud.
Furthermore, this identifying number is as the first port of call for your Live Business Identity which is the most consistently updated view of any particular company in their aforementioned Data Cloud. Plus, it will be referenced by potential lenders when they are trying to work out the financial stability and reliability of your business.
Once you have you have your own D-U-N-S Number, you can start to have a look at your D&B Rating and PAYDEX score by registering for D&B’s CreditSignal. This is a free service that will automatically alert you when (or if) your business’s credit score changes. Plus, you can even pay to see your full reports if that is necessary.
The benefits of knowing when your credit score changes and if any inquiries about your business’s credit file have come in are vital to running your company effectively. What are these advantages? Well, being in the know about all things credit-related can help you to:
There are also additional benefits that this free service will bring you, such as:
As a business owner, you can also find out your Dun & Bradstreet Rating and D&B PAYDEX score through Nav. If you have a standard account, you will be eligible to receive a D&B PAYDEX letter grade. However, if you have a premium account, you will be able to see your Dun & Bradstreet Rating and your exact PAYDEX score.
Nav is the only source on the market that allows you to access both personal and business credit reports and you can get started completely free — there really is no excuse!
