Free decoder

Your business has four credit scores. Only one of them decides.

Four bureaus. Four scales. None of them convert to each other. Here is which is which, what moves each one, and where to see them without paying for anything.

Here is what I wish somebody had told me before I spent six months building the wrong number.

There is no such thing as "your business credit score." Dun and Bradstreet publish PAYDEX. Experian publish Intelliscore Plus. Equifax publish more than one commercial score. And FICO publish a small business score that quietly reads your personal credit report.

Four names. Four scales. A supplier deciding on net 30 terms is not looking at the same number as a bank deciding on a hundred thousand dollar loan.

So if you have been paying vendors on time for a year and watching a number climb toward 80, that work was real. It may just have been aimed at a different desk than the one you want.

The decoder puts all four on one page.

What is inside

• The four scores side by side, with what each one actually measures
• Why 80 is not an A, and why a clean year of on-time payments caps you there
• The Experian version trap, and the two different scales people compare by mistake
• The score that blends your business data with your personal credit report
• What changed for Small Business Administration lending on March 1, and what did not
• Where to look for free, and exactly what the free tiers leave out
• Why nobody can hand you a clean list of which lenders report to which bureau, and the four step method that answers it for your own accounts
• A dated list of who reports where anyway: Chase, American Express, Capital One, Citi, Bank of America, M&T Bank, Citizens Bank, and the net 30 vendors, with a source and an as-of date on every single row
• A seven step checklist for your next two weeks, none of which costs money

Free, and no part of it asks you to open anything or apply for anything.

One thing you should know before you use any number in here

Three of the four organizations do not publish their own scales. FICO does not publish the range for its small business score. Equifax does not publish the ranges for its commercial scores. Experian publishes no official risk ranges for the version of its score that lenders actually see.

So every table in the decoder has a Source column. If the issuer publishes it, it says Published. If it comes from the industry rather than the issuer, it says Reported.

Reported does not mean wrong. It means do not build a plan on the third decimal of it.

All four scores, one page

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This content is for educational purposes only. Always follow up with your own research before making any financial decisions.