Business credit is essential so that your business can grow and thrive. You can be assured that you’ll have funds to maintain and build your business when you have sufficient credit. Here’s how to build business credit in five simple steps.

1. Keep Tabs on Your Company’s Credit Report

The first step is to know exactly where your credit currently stands. Find out the details of your credit report via Experian or Equifax. Create an account to review your existing report. A perfect business credit score is 100. You want to get as close to that number as possible. Consider subscribing to a credit monitoring service. This enables you to keep tabs on your business credit report as often as you like. It’s also a good motivator to keep raising your credit score.

2. Resolve Any Issues That You Find

Credit reports aren’t perfect. You may find that there are a few mistakes on your company’s credit report. Credit companies provide a way for you to lodge complaints when you see something that isn’t factual. To the right of the erroneous entry, click the button to dispute the entry. You’ll be presented with a screen where you can report why you think the information is wrong. You can also upload supporting documentation. You’ll find out in about 30 days whether the entry will be corrected, deleted or remain on your company’s credit report.

3. Get Credit Where Credit is Due

The more history you have of making timely payments, the better your credit score. Go through and ensure that all of your vendors are reporting your payments. Smaller vendors may not report payments, but larger ones almost always will. If you want large vendors to report to Dun & Bradstreet, you’ll need to acquire a Dun & Bradstreet number. This is a free number that will link to your business credit history. Another way to build business credit is to proactively pursue credit lines with larger vendors. In the beginning, they may only offer a small credit line. As you build a solid payment history, your credit line will increase.

4. Make Timely Payments

One of the biggest factors in building business credit is to always pay your bills on time. If this has been a problem in the past, consider ways to improve upon your habits. One way is to enlist a bookkeeper who can run accounts payable reports on a weekly basis. Each week, you and the bookkeeper can decide which vendors will be paid. Another option is to post calendar reminders in a software app. Make sure you don’t ignore the reminders! Yet another option is to check your payables folder on a daily basis. This would work best for smaller businesses that don’t have a lot of vendor bills each month.

5. Pay Off Bills

Credit utilization is another factor that heavily influences your credit score. When you maintain high balances each month, your credit score suffers. Pay off bills in full as much as possible. This ensures that the ratio of credit and amount owed is in your favor. In turn, your business credit score will get higher. Over time, vendors are more likely to increase your line of credit when your credit utilization is fairly low. This helps to build business credit, lowers the amount of interest you pay and ensures that credit will be available when times are tough.

Building business credit takes time. Take these steps now so you can enjoy a higher business credit score in the future.