Frequently Asked Questions

A Business Credit Advantage plan is a self-monitoring tool that permits you unlimited access to your business credit report and score. An invaluable tool for proactively managing your business credit, Business Credit Advantage provides a fast, economical way to access your company's business credit report and guard against identity theft. Ongoing knowledge of exactly what's in your company's credit report ultimately can help your business optimize future growth, from building capital to gaining customers.

The Business Credit Advantage report is the most complete credit report we have on your business. You will have unlimited access to your report for a full year. When we obtain additional information throughout the year, it will be automatically reflected in the online report. You will have access to this latest report for as long as your Business Credit Advantage subscription remains active. See sample report.

For specific questions about our business identity monitoring, please read our Business identity monitoring FAQs.

Business credit monitoring will not affect your business credit score because you won't incur hard inquiries. When you access your own business credit report, it's considered a soft inquiry which doesn't lower your business credit score as it's not a scoring factor.

No. You will need to purchase a separate Business Credit Advantage subscription plan for each location that you would like to monitor.

Our retail annual price for Business Credit Advantage is $199/year. This includes unlimited access to your most complete report, email alerts on changes, business identity protection, custom score improvement tips and a unique view of your financial and trade accounts, including Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE^®) Trades and Risk rating. If your report does not contain financial consortium data, your subscription may be eligible for a $10 discount.

Approximately 30 days in advance of the annual charge we will notify you by email of the pending renewal. Approximately three days before the end of your subscription period we will automatically renew your subscription. You will be notified by email to the status of your plan.

Experian checks for bankruptcies every day and checks for trade and public record changes every week.

Although Experian checks every day for bankruptcies and every week for trade and public record changes, you will receive an email alert only when one of your chosen companies has a negative credit experience. For some companies having financial or legal trouble, the email alerts could occur every week. For others experiencing a temporary problem, the email may come only for a few weeks and then stop. If a company is doing well, you probably will not receive any emails.

 In order to receive uninterrupted emails from us, please add:
ExperianHelpdesk@SmartBusinessReports.com,
Monitoring@SmartBusinessReports.com, and
ExperianSubscriptionBilling@SmartBusinessReports.com
to your "approved senders" list. Contact us if you'd like us to send you a test email.

Most email alerts are sent on Tuesdays.

Experian relies on new public record data and trade data from a number of outside sources, including court data from various municipalities. Unfortunately, sometimes there can be a delay by the courts and other outside sources in sending Experian this data. However, as soon as Experian receives new company data, the information is dated as per the time of the event and included in the Tuesday emails.

An email alert is sent out if a new public record is generated on your selected company. The public record could be a bankruptcy, a legal judgment, a tax lien, or a Uniform Commercial Code on a piece of equipment. An email alert is also sent out if a trade partner submits derogatory trade information on the company such as slow payments or a credit write-off.

Trade payment is the most frequent type of alert.

There is no typical experience for a company. In most cases, a company is affected by the industry it operates in, the amount of debt a management team takes on, the in-house policies on paying bills, and of course economic cycles and seasonality. These factors show how different companies can be.

Inquiry Alerts are included in the Business Credit Advantage Subscription. Each time an entity orders a copy of a credit report for a company you have enrolled in Business Credit Advantage, you will be notified via an automated email alert. Inquiries are processed weekly by Experian and sent to you every Tuesday. If you have more than one company enrolled in Business Credit Advantage, you will receive individual inquiry alerts for each company.

If you don't get email alerts, it could indicate that we have no record of the company experiencing any events that generate the credit alert triggers.

If an email we send to you bounces back as undeliverable for any reason, we will stop sending you alerts by email. Alerts are still generated, and are stored in the alert history available under the the heading "My Business Credit Advantage monitored company" link.

 In order to receive uninterrupted emails from us, please add Monitoring@SmartBusinessReports.com, Helpdesk@SmartBusinessReports.com, and ExperianSubscriptionBilling@SmartBusinessReports.com to your "approved senders" list. Contact us if you'd like us to send you a test email.

No, not completely. It is suggested that you review an Experian business report on the company to be certain. The business report will indicate how slow the DBT (days beyond terms) is for the company. A review of the Uniform Commercial Code listings on the business report also will indicate how leveraged the company is getting.

In addition, it is helpful to review any public information from the Securities Exchange Commission (if the company is traded on the stock market) or in news reports that may indicate items such as gains or losses of key customers or changes in the management team.

Contact us for more information.

A legal alert is based on new public record filings on the company. A legal alert could be a bankruptcy, a tax lien, or a judgment. A review of the company's business report will indicate which event pertains to the company.

A derogatory alert is based on new negative information regarding the company's obligations. This negative information could be "slow payment" comments by other suppliers, a new tradeline with a balance greater than 50 percent and more than 61 days beyond terms. It also could indicate that a tradeline or credit line has been turned over to a collection agency. A review of the company's business report will indicate which of these situations pertains to the company.

Payment warnings can refer to a few different things. It can warn that the company is becoming increasingly late with its trade payments and days beyond terms (DBT) are getting higher. It can also warn that the DBT significantly exceeds the company's six-month historical range. Also, it is possible the company is paying later than 70 percent of other businesses in the same industry. A review of the company's business report will indicate which of these situations pertains to the company.

Contact us with your request to stop future Business Credit Advantage subscription renewals. Please include specific details regarding the reason for your cancellation. You will continue to have access to your updated Experian report and receive emailed alerts for the remainder of the current subscription period.