Introduction To Credit Bureau Pulling

Collect! can take a file containing credit bureau reports and import and attach the report to the appropriate debtor. This assumes that you have the process in place to receive the file of requested credit bureau reports. If you are beginning the process of requesting the credit bureau reports, your search can take you to a variety of methods.

Third Party Products

There are a number of third party products such as SmartAlex and Quickbooks with advanced features designed solely for credit bureau reporting information. With these products, users may request an instant credit bureau report on an individual, or schedule a batch of requests to be sent in a timely manner. These products have the ability to handle the electronic request requirements, connect to the necessary resource, and receive either the credit bureau report on the user's screen, or pick up the return file of batched credit bureau reports requested earlier. You can continue using these products, if you supply the correct file number that Collect! uses for the account, in the appropriate data field used by the third party program. When the information is received back, Collect! will use the file number when importing and attaching the returned file of credit bureau reports. Unfortunately, this does require double entry of information into both your third party product and Collect!

Many of these programs do have the ability to import data into their own database. This means you can use Collect! to produce the information in a format that this third party software could import. Then the double entry is automated and you eliminate the chances of typos. These programs will have format specifications for the information needed. Provide these specifications to our support team and we can prepare the data in the format required.

Credit Bureau Utilities

Most companies acting as a credit bureau reporting service sell or supply their own software to pull a credit report individually, or by batch. If you intend to use Collect! to report to credit bureaus, then you will need to make a commitment to one of these services. When doing so, find out what they offer for requesting credit bureau reports and look for ease of use and cost effectiveness. These services will have specifications for sending information to satisfy the request.

Web Services

There are many new Web Services that enable you to request a credit bureau report. This is usually done by entering the necessary information into a submit form on the Internet and selecting Submit to send it. The returned HTML page can be saved and then attached to the debtor. This is great for single requests but does not handle multiple requests very smoothly.

The bottom line here, some software or service receives your request information electronically and prepares a file for you to pick up to display or print.

Collect! can produce the request information file. This is documented in How To Attach Credit Reports To Debtor Accounts.