Business credit, state by state.
Business credit is a file the company owns: vendor accounts, cards and loans that report against the entity rather than against you. The bureaus that keep it are national. The entity it hangs on is not, because it was formed in one state and has to stay current there. Pick your state for that layer, then build the file properly on top of it.
Four things that build the file.
Nobody hands a new company a credit profile. It gets assembled out of identifiers, accounts that report, and time. These four are the pieces, roughly in the order they arrive.
A D-U-N-S number
The file needs something to attach to. The D-U-N-S number from D&B is the identifier vendors and lenders look a company up by, and getting it is what turns an entity with an EIN into a business that can be found in a credit database at all.
Net-30 vendor tradelines
Scores are built from accounts that actually report. Opening five to seven net-30 vendor tradelines and paying them on schedule is what puts history into the file, and it is the slow, unglamorous part that most owners skip and later wish they had not.
PAYDEX, Intelliscore, FICO SBSS
There is no single business credit score. PAYDEX, Intelliscore and FICO SBSS are calculated separately from different inputs, and a lender may read one closely and never pull the others. Monitoring all three is the only way to know what an underwriter is looking at.
EIN, SSN, personal guarantee
Applications that take a Social Security number keep the borrowing on your personal file, and a personal guarantee puts you behind it whichever number was used. Building the business file is how that balance shifts over time, account by account rather than all at once.
The bureaus are national. The entity underneath them is not.
Pick your state.
Each state page covers the formation and compliance layer the credit file sits on: forming the entity there, getting the EIN, opening business banking, and keeping the state record current for the years the file takes to build.
A clean handoff, in four steps.
Building the file is a sequence, and doing it out of order wastes months. The first three steps are administrative. The fourth is mostly patience, measured in months rather than weeks.
Entity, EIN, bank account
Form the LLC, get the EIN, open a business bank account in the company's name. Nothing reports to a business file until there is a business for it to report against.
Get a D-U-N-S number
Request the D-U-N-S number from D&B so the company is identifiable in the database vendors and lenders check. This is the point at which the file exists, not the point at which it says anything.
Open accounts that report
Five to seven net-30 vendor tradelines first, then business credit cards. Pay them on time or early. Accounts that never report to a bureau are useful to the business and useless to the file.
Monitor and step up
Track PAYDEX, Intelliscore and FICO SBSS as history lands. After twelve to twenty-four months of clean reporting, higher-tier credit and larger funding become conversations worth having.
There is no shortcut through the middle. Time on the file is the product.
The rest of Money & operations.
Every one of these is built the same way: a national explainer above its state pages. They are the filings that sit closest to this one.
Hiring employees
Hiring employees, state by state
All 51 states → HubLLC Bank Account
LLC bank account, state by state
All 51 states →The full index lives on Money & operations.
The questions people ask before they start.
How long does it take to build business credit?
Twelve to twenty-four months of consistent reporting is the usual horizon before higher-tier credit is realistic. The first accounts can be opened within weeks of forming the entity, but a file with no history is only an identifier. What a lender reads is the pattern: accounts that report, paid on schedule, over enough time to look like a habit rather than an accident.
What is a D-U-N-S number?
It is the identifier D&B assigns to a business so it can be found in their database. Vendors and lenders use it to pull your file, and several credit products assume you have one before they will look at an application. Requesting it is a registration rather than an application for credit, so nothing is extended and nothing is scored at that stage.
Do I need an EIN and a bank account first?
Yes, and in that order: the entity is formed, the EIN attaches to it, the bank account opens in the company's name. Each step is the prerequisite for the next. Applying for anything before that chain is complete tends to put the account on your personal file instead, which is the outcome the whole exercise exists to avoid.
Will this get me out of personal guarantees?
Not immediately and not automatically. Early accounts often carry a personal guarantee because the business has no history for a lender to read. What changes is the balance over time: as the file fills with reported accounts paid on schedule, more of what the company borrows can stand on the company's own record. It is a shift rather than a switch.
Which score do lenders actually look at?
It depends on the lender. PAYDEX, Intelliscore and FICO SBSS are separate scores, calculated by different bureaus from different inputs, and one lender may weigh a score heavily while another never pulls it. Monitoring all three is less about improving a number than about knowing which version of your history sits in front of the person deciding.
Does my state change any of this?
The bureaus are national, so the mechanics do not move from one state to another. The entity underneath does. It is formed under one state's rules, keeps its record current with that state's office, and stops looking like a clean counterparty the moment that record lapses. Your state page covers the formation and compliance layer the file is standing on.
Keep going, in order.
Money & operations
Every hub in money & operations, in one place.
Open the index → IndexAll 51 state guides
Every filing a business does, organised by jurisdiction.
Open the index → ServiceCompliance calendar
Every deadline that touches your entity, watched.
Track deadlines → ServiceTalk to a specialist
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