There are many reasons for a Buy Here Pay Here operation to report credit to the bureaus each month but all too often these benefits are overlooked. It’s the key intangibles that will help keep your accounts in good standing and reward your business with repeat customers. If you run a BHPH dealership you know that your customers do not come in because of the great deals you offer, they come because you are their last and only hope to get them in a car. In most cases your customers have a poor credit score and are looking for a way to rebuild it.

This is where having the ability to report credit can help you stand out in the sea of your endless competitors. For example, someone trying to repair their credit score may be willing to sacrifice having a loan for a higher interest rate knowing that at the end of the loan they will be better off than when they started. Bottom line, it gives your customer another reason to buy from you rather than Joe’s next door.

Another reason that reporting credit is an attractive option is that it also places an emphasis on paying on time. When people know that their payment behavior is not being reported to a credit bureau they are less likely to make a payment on their due date causing your costs of collection efforts to increase. This also costs the customer, in the form of late charges and interest which, in their mind, will give them one more reason not to buy from you the next time around.

So how can you start implementing this at your dealership? Many startup dealers are under the impression that in order to report credit you must have a minimum number of active accounts for the bureau to accept your file. While this is true in some cases, it is not true for all. For example, Experian does not have a minimum requirement and it may be smart to start out here and work your way up to Equifax and Transunion, which do require a minimum number of accounts. Most dealer management solutions offer the ability to report credit at a minimal cost to you. This is important because having the ability to report from your DMS will keep you from having to enter additional data and will ensure that errors are eliminated.

Do you need to be a brain surgeon to report credit? No. In most cases your DMS will make it very simple for you. The credit bureaus will require a file in Metro2 format, which is a standardized format used to interpret your data. This usually results in your DMS exporting a single file to one or all bureaus at the same time. After your DMS generates the metro2 formatted file, they may provide you with a report indicating accounts with invalid data (ex: a missing address). Once the data is corrected you can then upload the file to the appropriate bureau’s website to complete the process. See www.transunion.com,www.equifax.com, & www.experian.com for more details on how you can get started.