Credit Bureau Pulling
Collect! currently has features to take a file containing
credit bureau reports and import them to the appropriate
debtor. It is required that you have the process in place
to receive the file of requested credit bureau reports.
If you are beginning this 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 that have
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. These
products have the ability to handle 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 for a batch
of credit bureau reports. You can continue using
these products by supplying 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, Collect! will use the file
number when importing and attaching each credit
report. This requires double entry of information into
both your third party product and Collect!.
Many of these programs have the ability to import
data into their own database. So you can use Collect!
to produce the information in a format that this third
party software can import. Then the double entry is
automated and you eliminate the chances of typos.
These programs 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,
ask them about requesting credit bureau reports to see
what they offer for ease of use and cost effectiveness.
These services have specifications for sending the
information to satisfy the request.
Web Services
There are many new Web Services for requesting a credit
bureau report. Usually, this is done through a Submit form
on the Internet, by filling out the necessary information and
submitting it. The returned HTML page can be saved and
then attached to the debtor. This works well for single
requests but does not handle multiple requests very
smoothly.
Whatever means is used, the basic point is that a product
or service receives request information from you electronically
and a file is prepared and made available for you to pick up,
display, or print.
The Credit Bureau will require you to place a file, in a
specific file format, in a location and will inform you of a
location where you can download the results of your request.
Credit Report Requests Using Collect!
If you have the exact specifications for the file, you can use
Collect! to make these credit report requests. Then you
would only require the steps needed to get the file to your
service. This eliminates the middle man.
There are many ways that this can be accomplished. To
illustrate a simple example, while a user is on a debtor, you
would run a contact plan to
1. Write a note " Credit Bureau Report requested."
2. Changes the status to CBP (to signify credit bureau pull).
3. Create a contact of Type OTHER with the Due Date set to
today's date and the Description "Request Credit Bureau Report."
Repeat this for the next debtor. You may also select a number
of debtors and run a batch process to run this contact plan
on each one of them. This will give you the same results on
any number of accounts.
Requesting in batches is far more efficient and eliminates
the time that it takes to deliver a single request at a time.
The next step would be to run a report at end of day, end of week,
or what ever time you wish. The report would search the database
for a contact created by the CBP contact plan. When one is found,
Collect! would then append to a file, the debtor's information in the
required format. Once this is done, Collect! can mark the contact
as done and repeat the steps until there are no more contacts
found.
The last step would be for you to locate the file Collect! created
and send it to the service according to their instructions.
The process is complete. When you receive a file from your
service with the batch of credit bureau reports, follow the steps
to import and attach these to the correct debtor account. Please
refer to How To Attach Credit Reports To Debtor Accounts for
details. This requires that you have Collect!'s Import/Export module.
See Also
- How to Attach Credit Reports To Debtor Accounts
- Batch Processing
- How To Use Contact Plans
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