5 Places You Can Find One

As the financially savvy consumer you are, you know why your personal credit score is a big deal, and where you can go to get your free personal credit report. But as the financially savvy business owner, do you know why your business credit score matters, or where you can find your free business credit report to monitor your score,

Unfortunately, lots of business owners remain in the dark about their business credit score. But as a major factor in whether your company can secure a small business loan, a business credit card, or other major financial partnership, your business credit score is worth monitoring closely. Just how can you go about monitoring your credit report,

Here are 5 places where you can find a free business credit report. Before we dive into where you can find a free business credit report, let’s run through why you’d want to obtain one in the first place. Well, for one, if you’re interested in getting a business loan from a bank or other lenders for your company—or securing business financing down the line—then you should care about your credit history and your current business credit score.

Just as your personal credit score measures your reliability with your personal finances, your business credit score measures your business’s trustworthiness with business finances. If your business credit score shows that your business has a good payment history and is creditworthy (a high Paydex score or FICO score), business lenders will feel more comfortable approving small business loans to you.

Your business credit score isn’t the only factor that determines your loan eligibility, but it’s a major part of your business loan application—especially if you’re applying to banks or more traditional lenders. On top of securing a business loan, a strong business credit score can help you get favorable payment terms from any of your business’s suppliers.

When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. A business credit score essentially shows how reliably a business pays its bills and if you pay off your business credit card. So having a strong score might convince suppliers to give you more comfortable terms. What Will Your Business Credit Score Look Like,

You might be shocked. Before you pull your free business credit report and panic at your low score, know this: Business credit scores are calculated on a different scale. Now that you know the basics of deciphering a business credit report, let’s cover the 6 places you can go to get a free business credit report.

CreditSignal is a free business credit reporting service offered by Dun & Bradstreet—and for a while, it was the only place to get a free business credit report. If you’ve had bad credit in the past, this is a great tool to try out. CreditSignal is a great tool that lets business owners stay on top of their business credit and be alerted when anything changes with their score. Once you sign up, you’ll have an online dashboard or can use a mobile app to monitor what’s going on with your business credit report.

Or, you can choose to receive email alerts whenever anything changes with your score. CreditSignal is not only one of the best (and easiest) places to find a free business credit report, it’s a great place to look for more business credit resources. They offer a business credit education online center to learn about credit information specific to your industry, or receive advice on how to improve your business credit score based on your profile.

One thing to note, however, is that CreditSignal gives you an indication only when your D&B business credit score and rating has changed, or when someone else has requested to see your business credit score. To view your actual score and rating—and learn who’s looking into your credit score profile—you’d need to purchase a subscription with Dun & Bradstreet to get a full business credit reporting service.

Nav is a credit monitoring service that give both consumers and business owners access to their personal and business credit history. Nav is another great place to look for a free business credit report—you don’t need a credit card to sign up. Nav will give you free access to a summary of your business credit reports from both Experian and Dun & Bradstreet.

Nav will also give you self-serve tools to help build your business credit—like easy error disputing and setting goals to help improve your business credit score (like paying down your business credit card). One benefit of using Nav is the fact that they provide you with summaries of both your Dun & Bradstreet and Experian reports. CreditSignal, on the other hand, just works with your Dun & Bradstreet score.