How To Get Help With Credit Bureau Reporting

WARNING: Reporting credit is a legal matter. You are responsible for ensuring that the information you are sending is accurate and complete. Do not report credit without being ABSOLUTELY SURE about your legal rights and the legal rights of the person or entity you are reporting.

This topic gives you very important step by step instructions for sending information to Technical Services when you need help with credit bureau reporting.

Credit Bureau Reporting is an optional feature that must be purchased in addition to the standard Collect! software. If you have not purchased this module, please get in touch with sales@collect.org or phone/fax us for purchasing details.

Choose A Credit Bureau

Credit Bureau Reporting through Collect! requires that you choose a credit bureau. Obtain details from them regarding personal settings that you will use in Collect!

These are the three major credit bureaus:

1.Trans Union
www.transunion.com 1-800-888-4213

2. Equifax
www.equifax.com 1-800-997-2493

3. Experian
www.experian.com 1-888-397-3742

Setup Credit Bureau Reporting

When you obtain a credit bureau account, the credit bureau will give you details of the settings they want you to use when you report credit to them. At that point, you can setup your credit bureau details in Collect! and run credit reports.

Please refer to How To Setup Credit Bureau Reporting for step by step procedures to set up Collect! for reporting to credit bureaus.

How To Run A Credit Bureau Report will step you through the reporting procedure itself.

Problems Reporting Credit

When you have an actual credit bureau account and have set up and run credit bureau reporting in Collect!, Collect! Technical Services can help you with problems related to actual reports that you have submitted to the credit bureaus.

Before your request or problem is addressed, Technical Services will ask that you supply the following information. We cannot proceed until we have this information.

What We Need To See

To help you, Technical Services needs to see:

1. The version and build of your Collect! application.

What version of Collect! are you running? Please pull down the Help menu at the top right of the Collect! screen and choose ABOUT. You will see the VERSION and BUILD that you are running displayed at the top of the box About Collect!

2. A copy of the actual file you submitted to the credit bureau.

3. A copy of the actual remarks that the credit bureau gave you when it reported errors.

These remarks may have come by phone, email or fax when the credit bureau failed to process your file. Please include whatever information you can about the actual problems they had with your file.

4. Any additional comments that you wish to make about the file or the credit bureau's response.

Information can be attached to your email along with the cbr file. Large files can be zipped before you attach them to you email.

Locating The Credit Report File

If you have trouble locating the credit report file, try this:

1. Pull down the Tools menu and choose Credit Reporting.

2. Choose Credit Bureau Setup.

3. Locate the 'Drive' field and check its contents.

This is where your file is being sent when you report credit.

4. When you run your credit bureau report, Collect! will display the location and name of the file that it creates.

For example:

Exporting Trans Union files, named TU001 etc., you will see:

Export Trans Union data to C:\TU.001

You can do a search for files to find out where they are on your system, if you can't find them as described above. Look for files named TU.*, EXP.* or EXP.*

5. When you run your credit bureau report, the resulting *.001 file is generated in the root of your C:\ drive. Be sure you send Collect! Technical Services the correct file. If your files is large, you can zip it and attach it to your email.

Email Information And Files

Send an email to Technical Services to initiate communication using the link below. Be sure to enter an appropriate description in the Email Subject or your request will be rejected.

Email: support@collectsoftware.cc

Attach all relevant information to the email.

Getting A Response

A support ticket will be created as a result of your email. Collect! Technical Services will normally acknowledge use this ticket to confirm receipt of your information and files and communicate with you. We will advise you when we have examined the data you supply to us and have determined the steps needed for you to remedy the situation.

Please allow a reasonable amount of time to handle your request. We will be in touch with you as soon as possible, so please refrain from phoning while we are looking into your information.

Summary

This procedure is the most efficient way to solve credit report problems. Technical Services can often quickly determine what needs to be changed, when we see the data file and the credit bureau's remarks.

Please DO NOT phone us before you have actually set up an account with a credit bureau!

Please be sure that you are sending the correct report data file and don't forget to include the credit bureau's remarks regarding errors.

See Also

- Credit Bureau Reporting Topics