Here's how to check your business credit score with Dun & Bradstreet

If you run a small business and plan to apply for a loan or line of credit, check your business credit score first. Yes, businesses have credit scores, too — and lenders may use them when evaluating your application.

Checking your business credit report can give you a better sense of where your business stands and whether there are any errors you should address before applying for financing. Dun & Bradstreet, a credit reporting bureau that provides credit reports and scores for businesses, is one of the better-known sources. Other major business credit bureaus include Experian Business and Equifax Small Business.

Here’s how to check your business credit with Dun & Bradstreet.

To get your Dun & Bradstreet score, you need to first get your D-U-N-S number — it’s a 9-digit number that identifies your Dun & Bradstreet business credit file. It’s free to sign up for and you can do so on the Dun & Bradstreet website.

Then, you’ll sign up for D&B Credit Insights. There are four pricing plans that give you a different level of access to your credit profile:

• Free: A starting point that gives you a basic overview of your scores and ratings. You can check your PAYDEX® Score, Delinquency Score, Failure Score and Supplier Evaluation RiskRating (SER^®).
• Basic: This costs $49 per month and lets you monitor more of your scores in greater detail and gives you alerts on major changes.
• Plus: For $149 per month, you can compare your performance against industry peers, monitor for risks and get unlimited access to your reports.
• Premium: At $199 per month, you can manage your business credit profile and submit financial and payment data to help build up a better view of your business, track vendors and customers and evaluate the risk for companies you work with.

Dun & Bradstreet calculates several different types of scores for your business:

• PAYDEX® Score: This is the business equivalent of your personal FICO® Score and it’s rated between 1 and 100. Anything above an 80 is considered low risk and more creditworthy.
• D&B Delinquency Predictor Score (DPS): This score tells the likelihood that your business would make a late payment, go bankrupt or have payment failures. It’s rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a low chance for delinquency and 5 being a high chance of delinquency.
• D&B Failure Score®: This is the likelihood that your business will need to file for bankruptcy within the next 12 months. This score is also rated on a scale of 1 to 5.
• D&B Supplier Evaluation Risk (SER) Rating: If your business is a supplier, this score is highly relevant to you. This score helps predict the likelihood that a supplier will shut down in the next 12 months. It goes off of a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 being low risk of shutdown and 9 being a high risk of shutdown.
• D&B Maximum Credit Recommendation: Lenders use this score when deciding how much of a line of credit to provide your business with. It’s generated by analyzing size, industry and payment history of your business.
• D&B Rating: This is your business’ overall creditworthiness rating. It combines factors like your company’s size, assets, liabilities and the owners’ equity.
• D&B Cyber Risk Rating: This is a newer rating and it measures a supplier’s vulnerability to cyber threats.

Similar to your personal credit score, you can improve your business credit score by making debt payments on time and in full, and requesting that your suppliers and vendors report your on-time payments to Dun & Bradstreet.

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