ID Section
Business name, business address, business phone and fax number, the date the file was established, an Equifax file number and, when available, SIC (standard industrial classification) number.

Summary Section
Designed to give you an overview of the degree of risk and the contents of the report. Will include how suppliers are being paid generally and what negative information is being reported.

Trade Items
Each line of this section shows either the industry or name of the reporting supplier, the month the line was posted, aged receivable information and the supplier’s comments on the customer’s payment habits. Information is sorted in descending order by date received.

Payment Trends
A consolidated trending of supplier experience over nine historical quarters. The current situation is often not as important as the trend. Are payments steady, slower or faster?

Return Cheques
Reported in the last five years by suppliers.

Collection Claims
This information notifies you of collection claims reported against the firm in the last five years.

Legal Information and Other Information
Equifax receives notice of legal suits and judgments from virtually every courthouse in Canada and remains on the file for five years.

Information Received from the Superintendent of Bankruptcy
National information is received weekly from the Superintendent of Bankruptcy. This information remains on the file for five years.

Banking Information
When available, this section can include information on bank accounts, loans and line of credits held.

Company Information
When available, this section shows information such as date of incorporation, names of principals, employee detail, premises, finances and inventory details.

Additional Comments
Miscellaneous information reported on the business.

Other Files Included in this Report
Shows previous address and business name information. Files are linked together to deliver one complete report.

Recent Inquiries
Date, name or industry type and phone number of inquiring entity.

Scoring

CREDIT INFORMATION SCORE
The CI – “Credit Information Score” is easy to understand. The higher the score, the greater the risk factor. The degree of risk becomes less and less as the score approaches zero. Zero is a perfect score. A company with a zero CI would represent the lowest possible risk. 99.7% of all businesses score higher than a zero score. A company with a score greater than 40 would be considered a high risk. Only 1.06% of all businesses score higher than 40.

New companies automatically default to a CI score of 20 which means they are neither “good” nor “bad”. As time goes by and no negatives are received the score will drop and thus indicate lowered risk. Companies reported to us by the Superintendent of Bankruptcy automatically score 70 to draw your attention to the insolvency proceedings.

Any company scoring between 1 and 10 would be a very good risk. 85.2% of businesses are higher risks than this group. Over 20 the risk increases as the score rises. 17.5% of businesses listed score over 20.

The score is calculated on the 7 elements shown at the end of the report in the matrix. For example the longer a company is in business the less of a risk they are. The faster they pay bills the less of a risk they are, etc…

PAYMENT INDEX
The PI – “Payment Index score” takes the amounts in the current, 1st, 2nd and 3rd periods past due and calculates the amounts as percentages of the total amount owed. It then uses a formula to work out what equates to the average days beyond terms that a business is taking to pay suppliers. In Canada the average score is 22. Accounts often start getting placed out to third party collection agencies when the PI hits about 60. The highest you will see is 100. To reach a PI of 100, everything owing would have to be in the 3rd Period Past Due. To have a zero PI score all the trade payment experiences would have to be current.

How the scores are trending over the last few years is often of more importance than how they score at the moment. Is the risk increasing or decreasing? We show up to 9 quarters of historical trended scores.