Buy your business credit report from a commercial bureau. Equifax, Experian and CreditorWatch all sell one. Equifax’s SwiftCheck report is a paid product and is delivered immediately. Your personal credit report is separate and free every three months from Equifax and Experian.
Business credit score: what it is and how to check yours
Your business credit score shapes what lenders, suppliers and insurers say when you ask for terms. Here is what sits behind the number, where to find yours, and what actually moves it.
What lenders see when they look you up
What is a business credit score?
A business credit score is a single number that summarises how your business has handled credit. Credit bureaus build it from your business credit report, which records credit applications, defaults, court judgments and external administration. Lenders, suppliers and insurers buy that report when they decide whether to give you terms.
Equifax, one of the main commercial bureaus in Australia, scores businesses from -200 to 1,200. The score is a prediction rather than a verdict: it estimates how likely the business is to have an adverse credit event in the next twelve months. Experian and CreditorWatch run their own scales, so the same business can hold different numbers in different places. Worth knowing that illion merged into Experian on 1 April 2026, so on the consumer side there are now two credit reporting bodies rather than three.
Two terms get used interchangeably when they should not be. Your business credit report is the history. Your business credit score is the number derived from it. When a lender says they have pulled your credit, they mean the report.
Business credit score vs personal credit score
Two different files, held separately, built from different information.
- Your personal credit score covers your own borrowing: credit cards, personal loans, phone plans, and any defaults in your name.
- Your business credit score covers commercial credit: trade accounts, business finance, ASIC-registered details, and defaults or judgments against the entity.
For sole traders the line blurs, because there is no separate legal entity, so lenders usually look at both. Company directors get asked for a personal guarantee for the same reason. If you are trading under an ABN and wondering which file matters, the honest answer is both, weighted differently depending on the size of the facility. Our ABN loans page covers how that works in practice.
How to check your business credit score in Australia
Three routes, and they are not equally free. Buy your business credit report from a commercial bureau, get your personal credit report free every three months from Equifax and Experian, and check your own ABN, ASIC and supplier records before paying for anything.
What is a good business credit score?
There is no industry pass mark, and any lender quoting one is describing their own policy. On the Equifax commercial scale of -200 to 1,200, a higher score means a lower predicted risk of an adverse event in the next year.
More useful than the number is what sits behind it:
- No defaults or judgments against the entity
- A trading history long enough to show a pattern
- Credit applications spread out rather than clustered
- ASIC and ABN details that match what you tell lenders
- Suppliers paid inside terms
A score that has dropped is usually one event rather than a slow decline. Find the event.
Does checking your own credit score hurt it?
No. Checking your own file does not lower your score. It is logged as a soft enquiry that credit providers cannot see. What they do see is the hard enquiry recorded each time you apply for credit, along with how many applications you have made.
The thing worth avoiding is not checking, it is scattering applications. Four lenders in a fortnight leaves four enquiries on the file, and that pattern reads as a business struggling to find funding. Work out what you qualify for first, then apply once.
What affects your business credit score
- Defaults. A commercial default stays on the file for five years even after you pay it. Paying it changes the status to paid, which reads better, but it does not remove the listing.
- Court judgments and external administration. The heaviest marks a commercial file carries.
- Hard credit enquiries. Both the number and how tightly they are clustered. Checking your own file does not count.
- Age and structure of the business. A new ABN has no pattern to read yet, which is not the same as a bad one.
- Payment behaviour with suppliers who report to a bureau. Not all of them do.
Improving it is slower than damaging it. Pay defaults and get the status updated, keep applications deliberate, correct anything wrong on the file with the bureau directly, and give it time. Nothing lifts a score quickly, which is exactly why checking yours before you need finance is worth more than checking it during. Our guide on improving your business credit score goes further.
What lenders actually do with the number
Here we can be specific, because it is our own process. OnDeck does not decide on a credit score alone. We built Lightning Score™ on thousands of data points and a decade of small business lending, and we read your business bank statements alongside your credit profile: revenue patterns, how the account is run, whether the trading is real.
That matters if your score is lower than you would like. A business carrying a default from three years ago with twelve months of steady deposits behind it is a very different proposition from an identical score with nothing behind it. It is why we look at more data points than traditional lenders do. Reading the trading is the whole point of unsecured business loans.
We assess loans up to $200,000 on your ABN, the business owner’s driver’s licence and 6 months of digital bank statements. Above that, up to $300,000, we also ask for your ICA, plus either your income tax return or accountant-prepared financials. Lightning Loans™ up to $200,000 are approved in minutes. No security interests, no caveat on the family home, just a personal guarantee.
Everyday scenarios
These scenarios are illustrative examples, not real customers.
The cafe owner with an old default
“A supplier listed a default in 2023 over an invoice I disputed. I paid it. It is still sitting there.”
Correct, and that is how the system works. Commercial defaults stay listed for five years, paid or not. What changes is the status, and how a lender reads that status against the two years of trading that followed it.
Cafe owner · Melbourne
The supplier who ran a check before saying yes
“I asked for 30 day terms on a $40,000 order. They came back two days later asking about a listing from 2022.”
Anyone can pull a report on any registered Australian business, and suppliers do exactly that before they extend terms. The score is not only a lending question. Knowing what sits on your file before someone else reads it is the point of checking.
A commercial cleaning business · Adelaide
How it works
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Online application in minutes
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Approval in minutes up to $200k, hours up to $300k
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Often funded same day
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Dedicated Australia-based loan specialist support
Business credit score FAQs
Your personal credit report is free every three months from Equifax and Experian, and for sole traders and guarantors it is the file that carries most of the weight. A full commercial credit report on the business itself is generally a paid product, though CreditorWatch currently offers the first one free on a trial. Worth checking what a free tool actually returns before you hand over your details, since some send a callback rather than a number.
Yes. They are separate files. A commercial score uses commercial indicators: registered defaults, credit enquiries against the business, court judgments and external administration. A personal score reflects your own borrowing. For sole traders and directors giving a guarantee, lenders often look at both.
There is no universal pass mark. Equifax scores commercial files from -200 to 1,200 and higher means lower predicted risk. What lenders read alongside it matters just as much: trading history, defaults, and how recently you have applied elsewhere.
No. Checking your own file is logged as a soft enquiry, which credit providers cannot see and which does not affect your score. Hard enquiries are the ones they see, and those are recorded when a credit provider requests your report because you have applied for credit.
Commercial defaults stay listed for five years, including after you pay them. The listing updates to show it has been paid, which lenders generally view more favourably.
Your ABN or ACN and the registered business details. Worth knowing that a commercial report is not restricted the way your personal file is: anyone can buy a report on any registered Australian business, which is exactly how suppliers run checks before offering terms. The same is true of anyone checking you.
Possibly, depending on what is behind the score and how the business is trading now. We assess unsecured business loans on your bank statements as well as your credit profile, so a single old default does not automatically end the conversation. Our business finance options page covers what is available.
A new ABN with no trading history has nothing for a bureau to score yet. That is a gap rather than a black mark. Keep the business banking clean and separate from personal accounts, pay suppliers inside terms, and a profile builds.
Commercial credit bureaus, mainly Equifax, Experian and CreditorWatch. Note that illion merged into Experian on 1 April 2026, though the illion name still appears on some commercial products. Commercial credit information is governed by the Australian Privacy Principles rather than the consumer credit reporting rules.