Business credit monitoring or company tracking is the monitoring of a business' credit history in order to detect any suspicious activity or changes. While most people are familiar with consumer credit reports, many are unaware that a similar reporting system exists to alert you to changes in a business' credit activities. The activities mentioned are usually the filing of latest accounts, board appointments and resignations, share capital amendments, CCJs and changes to the credit rating. The use of these reports are varied and may include protecting against suspected fraud to assessing the performance of a business.
Businesses in South Carolina filing tax returns were invited to enrol on free business credit monitoring services provided by credit agency D&B and Experian after state officials claimed an international computer hacker accessed data from up to 657,000 businesses in what experts call the largest cyber-attack against a state tax agency in the nation.
The benefits of such business credit monitors are that they can provide you with instantaneous alerts through email about any suspicious or notable activities in a company’s financial status as soon as they occur.
Companies are fluid and rapidly changing; a company that may seem secure one day can become a risk overnight. While a single report is just a snapshot in time, monitoring business credit over time provides a much wider perspective on a business as well as providing the ability to react quickly to any important credit changes before they happen or as they happen.
Largely used as a method to determine a company’s ability to pay debts, company tracking can help you establish what companies cannot pay you, as well as what companies can’t pay you.
Business credit monitoring is also used when a company wants to control their own business credit profile, since company credit reports are used by potential business partners and investors to determine how credible a company is, it can be useful to understand how your own business credit report will be seen and in turn how to improve it.
A business credit monitoring monitors informs you off changes to:
the filing of latest accounts,
board appointments
changes of directors
resignations bankruptcy/insolvency
adverse legal information
slow payment information
county court judgements
credit score / rating change
annual accounts and returns
company details change
In the United Kingdom, the Big Three credit agencies all offer this service as well as smaller bureaus such as First Report, Experian and UK Credit Info.