When Will This Show Up on My Credit Report?

The following is being shared for informational purposes and is not credit repair advice.

So you know that your credit report is important. And you know that it contains a lot of useful information about your usage of credit over the past seven to ten years. But have you ever wondered exactly how quickly certain information is added to your report? Here's what you need to know. 

Creditor account information

The majority of your credit report is made up of information reported by your creditors. This includes missed payments, made payments, new accounts, closed accounts, etc.

Creditors generally report on individual consumer accounts to credit bureaus once a month. The time of month usually doesn’t change, so how quickly something like a missed payment hits your credit report is dependent on how close the event is to the reporting date.

• Closing date is when your billing cycle ends and your monthly charges are calculated.
• Due date is the last day your payment can be made before being considered late.
• Reporting date is when creditors provide updated information (including missed payments) to the credit bureaus.

For most creditors, the reporting date will be about 30 days after your due date, giving you a small cushion where you may be able to still make a payment before your account becomes delinquent on your credit report.

Also note that creditors don’t really report “late” or “missed” payments – they report whether or not your account is current or delinquent. That’s an important distinction. If you missed your payment last month and then made a regular payment this month, your account would remain 30 days delinquent and would be reported as such until you managed to bring it current. When you miss multiple payments your accounts becomes increasingly delinquent – 30, 60, 90 days delinquent, etc. The status of the account is what’s reported, not the fact that you missed a payment.

Credit inquiries

Credit inquiries occur when someone pulls a copy of your credit report, either to review the information or as part of a loan or credit application. These credit pulls are typically reported to other credit bureaus almost immediately (within a day or two).

A soft inquiry (or soft pull) occurs when someone checks your credit report for the purpose of conducting a background check, most often as part of a job or rental application. They can also occur when you check your own credit. Essentially anytime someone pulls your credit report for a reason other than potentially extending you more credit, that’s a soft inquiry. Soft inquiries appear on your credit report, but are not factored into your credit score.

Hard inquiries (or hard pulls), on the other hand, occur when you apply for additional credit and they do impact your credit score. Be careful when shopping for credit or loan products, as multiple hard inquiries in a short amount of time can bring down your credit score and will show up on your credit reports quickly.

Non-creditor account activity

Your landlord doesn’t have to report on the status of your rental agreement to the credit bureaus, but they can if they choose to. If you fall behind on the rent or break your lease, your landlord may report that information to the credit bureaus at their discretion. The only criteria is that you must be at least 31 days past due before they can report the delinquency.

Rent payments, in general, don’t have much impact on your credit score – at least, historically they haven’t. That’s begun to change a bit. Many credit scoring models now give you the ability (often through a paid service) to include your rental history in their reports and score calculations. The only catch is that you have to either rent from a property management company that makes reports to Experian, or make your monthly payments through one of the rental payment service providers that currently works with Experian.

Where other non-creditors are concerned (think cellular service providers, cable companies, utility companies, etc.), account information is rarely reported to credit bureaus. Like landlords, these service providers may provide information on overdue accounts if they choose, but you’re most likely to only ever see these accounts on your credit report if they became severely delinquent and were sold to a collection agency.