Report Credit

Updated 2 weeks ago by Jackson Stone

Introduction
Setup
How To
- Export Data
- Credit Manager

Introduction

In LoanPro, there are two main ways to report a borrower's credit to a Credit Reporting Bureau. Our Mid-Market clients typically report through Credit Manager, and our Enterprise clients will query the database directly to generate credit reports.

Before you report anything, you'll need a credit reporting account with at least one of the major credit bureaus. This is different than a credit pulling account. If you already have an account with one of the credit bureaus, it is most likely a credit pulling account. If you're using our Mid-Market solution, you'll also need to purchase Credit Manager, a credit reporting software. Credit Manager can only be installed on Windows computers. Once you have set up an account with a major credit bureau and have installed Credit Manager, you are ready to report credit.

This article will explain in detail how to set everything up and report credit. If you're not yet familiar with how the process works in LMS, then our article Credit Reporting – The Basics might be a good primer.

Setup

Credit Bureaus

Accounts do not report credit automatically, so you will need an account with a major credit bureau. However, each credit bureau has a different set of requirements to open an account. Here is some basic information about the major credit bureaus that may be helpful in deciding which one(s) to sign up with:

Credit Bureau	Requirements
Equifax	Minimum of 500 accounts for all industries except Credit Unions and Banks which have a 100 account minimum. State laws allow mortgage reporting to report less than 500 accounts through The Service Bureau.
Experian	No account minimum A waiting period may apply for industries other than Banks, Credit Unions, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Contact Experian for more details about their approval process.
Transunion	Minimum of 100 accounts
Innovis	Less than 100 accounts must be reported through The Service Bureau.

Credit Reporting Options

Most of our Mid-Market customers report credit using Credit Manager since LoanPro exports credit data in a way that complements the reporting software. However, large customers often extract data then verify, scrub, and report to the credit bureaus themselves.

The easiest way to do this is to pull the data directly from the database. This is only an option if you have direct database access with LoanPro. Credit reporting data includes the following:

Field Name	Description	Database Table Location
Loan ID	The identifier of the loan inside LoanPro.	loan_entity
Date Created	The date the loan is created.	loan_entity
Contract Date	The date the loan will start.	loan_setup_entity
Original Loan Amount	The total amount being lent, not including the Underwriting Fee.	loan_setup_entity
Interest Rate	The interest rate for the loan. This will include the interest rate frequency	loan_setup_entity
Term	The number of payment periods in the loan.	loan_setup_entity
First Payment Due Date	The date the first payment will come due on the loan.	loan_setup_entity
Payment Amount	The amount to be paid every payment period.	loan_setup_entity
Record Date	The date of report (usually today's date).
Account Status	Customizable status identifier for your loans.	loan_status_archive
Sub Status	Customizable sub-status identifier for your loans.	loan_status_archive
Credit Status	A status used in credit bureau reporting to indicate delinquency or other status of the loan.	loan_settings_entity
Credit Bureau	The associated credit bureau.	loan_settings_entity
Credit ECOA	This is a credit reporting code that describes the responsibility for the loan of the primary customer.	loan_settings_entity
Co-Buyers ECOA	This is a credit reporting code that describes the responsibility for the loan of the secondary customer.	loan_settings_entity
Account Closed Date	Date the account was closed.	loan_settings_entity
Payment Frequency	The frequency at which payments come due.	loan_setup_entity
Remaining Principal Balance	The remaining principal balance on the loan.	loan_status_archive
Date of 1st Delinquency	Date the loan was first delinquent.	loan_delinquency_entity
Amount Past Due	The amount past due, if any.	loan_status_archive
Amount 30+ Days Past Due	The amount 30+ days past due, if any.	loan_status_archive
Last Payment Date	The date of the last payment made on the loan.	loan_status_archive
Last Payment Amount	The amount of the last payment made on the loan.	loan_status_archive
Days Past Due	Days the loan is past due.	loan_status_archive
First Name	Borrower's first name.	customer_entity
Middle Name	Borrower's middle name.	customer_entity
Last Name	Borrower's last name.	customer_entity
Email Address	Borrower's email address.	customer_entity
Primary Phone	Borrower's primary phone number	customer_phone_entity
Secondary Phone	Borrower's secondary phone number.	customer_phone_entity
Address	Borrower's address.	address_entity
City	Borrower's city.	address_entity
State	Borrower's state.	address_entity
Zip Code	Borrower's zip code.	address_entity
Social Security Number	Borrower's SSN.	This value is held in the customer_entity table, but it is encrypted there. To get the unencrypted value, you must use the API.
Date of Birth	Borrower's date of birth.	This value is held in the customer_entity table, but it is encrypted there. To get the unencrypted value, you must use the API.
Gender	Borrower's gender.	customer_entity
Generation Code	Borrower's generation code.	customer_entity
Employer	Borrower's employer name.	customer_employer_entity
Employer Address	Employer's address.	address_entity
Employer City	Employer's city.	address_entity
Employer State	Employer's state.	address_entity
Employer Zip	Employer's zip code.	address_entity
Employer Phone	Employer's phone number.	customer_employer_entity
Co-buyer First Name	Co-borrower's first name.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Middle Name	Co-borrower's middle name.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Last Name	Co-borrower's last name.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Email Address	Co-borrower's email address.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Primary Phone	Co-borrower's primary phone number.	customer_phone_entity
Co-buyer Secondary Phone	Co-borrower's secondary phone number.	customer_phone_entity
Co-buyer Secondary Phone	Co-borrower's secondary phone number.	customer_phone_entity
Co-buyer Address	Co-borrower's address.	address_entity
Co-buyer City	Co-borrower's city	address_entity
Co-buyer State	Co-borrower's state	address_entity
Co-buyer Zip Code	Co-borrower's zip code.	address_entity
Co-buyer Social Security Number	Co-borrower's SSN.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Date of Birth	Co-borrower's date of birth.	customer_entity
Co-buyer Gender	Co-borrower's gender.	customer_entity
Charge Off	Charge-off amount, if any.	loan_chargeoff__transactions
Credit Limit	Credit limit on the loan.	loan_setup_entity
Date of First Delinquency	The first date in the current delinquency when the loan was delinquent.	loan_status_archive

Once the data is gathered, it can be reported through a software like Credit Manager. It can also be reported directly to the credit bureaus. This method requires the data to be in Metro 2 format. All that is required to report directly to most credit bureaus is a data furnishers agreement, which is required to report via any method.

The Credit Bureaus will reject special characters in names. LoanPro allows those characters, though, so if your customers have names like O'Leary, al-Bayt, or García-Carrión, you'll run into issues when you try to export the file. Most likely, the credit bureaus will reject it. You may want to validate your data before submitting it.

Credit Manager Setup

Once you install Credit Manager, you will need to follow these steps in order to complete your setup:

Download the .ID4 file and save it on your computer. To do this, navigate to Tools > Credit Reporting inside your company account.

Expand the Setup Section by clicking the down arrow.

Click either 'Canada link file' or 'US link file' to download the appropriate link file. Make sure you save the file to a location on your computer where you will be able to find it.

Place the file in the following folder: Users\[Your User Folder Name]\AppData\Roaming\TSBSoftware\Credit Manager 5\ImportDefs on your computer.

How To

Export Data

To report credit, you should first export your customer credit data. To do this, navigate to Loans > Loan Manager inside your company account.

Search for the accounts that you want to report credit for. From the Data Options drop-down, choose Credit Report > Export Accounts. This will take you to Tools > Credit Reporting where you can export the credit data for your accounts. Click 'Export', and the system will generate a file.

The credit reporting page. The Setup and Export Rules sections are collapsed, and the Credit Reporting History has one entry. The columns in the history include a file name, the time it was completed, the LMS user who queued it, the file size, and the system-generated password to open the file.

Once the file is complete, just click the 'Download' button next to it. The credit data will be downloaded in a password-protected .zip file. To extract the contents of this file, you will need a password, which can be found in the Password column of the Credit Reporting History table. In this photo, for example, you can see the password is '14551ba'. Now that you have downloaded credit data for your customers, you can import it into Credit Manager.

Although it's saved in a .zip file, the credit reporting file itself is a .csv file. These types of files are spreadsheets that can be viewed and edited using programs like Excel, Google Sheets, SPSS, or OpenOffice Calc. If you don't have any of these, we recommend you download OpenOffice for free. Here is a Sample Credit Reporting File with a few lines of data so you can see what they look like.

If you are having trouble with your spreadsheet program dropping your leading zeros, read our article that describes how to Keep Your Leading Zeros.

Credit Manager

We've created a short video showing the steps of exporting the data from LMS, extracting it from the .zip file, and finally importing it into Credit Manager 5.