When do my credit card companies report to the credit bureau's?

[Anonymous]

Okay, so I just checked my Credit Score and Credit Report.

And it states that my down falls are

"that I have made heavy use of your available revolving credit. "

And

" The balances on your non-mortgage credit accounts are too high."

Yet, I pay my all Credit Cards off in FULL every month. Even if I am not able to pay it one of them off completely one month, it's usually for less then 20 dollars.

So I did a little research, and it becomes evident that the reasoning for me supposedly having "High Balances" even though my cards are paid off in full every month is because they are doing their best to report to the Bureau's on dates when I do have a balances. (IE: Nowhere near payment due dates)

So I guess the question is what dates are they submitting my reports to the Bureau's?

Is there a way to find out? I saw some posts that said I could post and people would give me a better idea for my specific credit card companies.

I have three Credit Cards.

I have:

HSBC Orchard Bank Secured card. My bill is around the 15th every month.

Capital One Card. Around the 15th again.

And a Chase Card. around the 5th every month.

So when should I be sure to pay these off in order to have low/no balances posted to my reports?

And how long of a time should I maintain a low/no balance to be sure that it does get posted that way? (Days? Weeks?)

Thanks in advance.

[unlucky_hove]

They will report a few days after the statement due date except your orchard.  HSBC was reporting at the end of the month, but as of late you cannot predict what they are going to do.

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

CapOne and Chase update the balance due amount on your statement, and they send it in that night.

HSBC/ Orchard traditionally has reported your balance as of the last day of the month, and they actually submit it a week or so later. Recently there have been posts here that indicate that they might be starting to report your statement balance, as most other cards do.

For optimum scoring (you DON'T have to do this all the time; just if you want to fine-tune your scores), let two report $0 and the other report a minimal amount. (Then pay.)

I would pay of your CapOne and HSBC/ Orchard cards online, a few days before the statement is due. Keep an eye on the HSBC/ Orchard card, and maybe do the same at the end of the month.

Chase is dead-reliable about having the same day of the month for your statement, and they do send in that one. So you might pay your Chase balance down to $10-20 a few days before the statement is due, let that amount report, and then pay it off. <-- this is really easy to forget to do, btw; set up some sort of reminder system.

Experian updates the night that they receive the info. Equifax and TransUnion take anywhere from 3-10 days to post the info, even though they have it. Once the new balance is in for any given card, a score pulled then will reflect that balance. So it's a very fluid situation.

What with HSBC/ Orchard changing its routine, you might need to wait until the end of the month to make sure that they've updated. But at any rate, your scores will potentially change every time a new balance hits a report.

eta: unlucky_hove put it much more tidily than I did. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info.

So just to make sure I'm understanding correctly.  Say my due date is on the 15th and my statement date is on the 18th of every month.

I should pay my card off entirely by the 15th, then make a small purchase ($10-20) before the 18th, and let it maintain only that amount until about the 20th?

That way it's paid in full every month, yet still has a small balance on every statement date? Then of course give them a few days to process it before making large purchases on it again?

Thanks Again.

[unlucky_hove]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the info.

So just to make sure I'm understanding correctly.  Say my due date is on the 15th and my statement date is on the 18th of every month.

I should pay my card off entirely by the 15th, then make a small purchase ($10-20) before the 18th, and let it maintain only that amount until about the 20th?

That way it's paid in full every month, yet still has a small balance on every statement date? Then of course give them a few days to process it before making large purchases on it again?

Thanks Again.

---

A+

What I generally do with my cap1 is use it all I want up to a few days before my due date. Then I pay it down to about $10 and leave it alone until I see the next months payment due date on the website (That indicates my statement has been cut). The day my new payment date hits I let the spending resume. Try that instead of paying it to $0 and then running around with three cards trying to make three seperate $10-20 purchases.

@hauling: Most of the time im typing from my iPhone so its best to be short and sweet 

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the info.

So just to make sure I'm understanding correctly.  Say my due date is on the 15th and my statement date is on the 18th of every month.

I should pay my card off entirely by the 15th, then make a small purchase ($10-20) before the 18th, and let it maintain only that amount until about the 20th?

That way it's paid in full every month, yet still has a small balance on every statement date? Then of course give them a few days to process it before making large purchases on it again?

Thanks Again.

---

What's tough to understand is that you need to stop paying attention to the due date. That's for LAST month's statement.

What you're trying to do is get THIS month's statement reporting $0.

There's nothing wrong with the plan you stated, except that it mentally has you playing catch-up ball every month.

With the date example that you posted, pay off the balance on your existing statements now. (That's last month's statement.) After this point, any additional charges will show up on the upcoming statement, and those are the ones that you want to pay off early. Since it's already past the 18th, you need to pay whatever the balance was on your July 18 statement. That clears off the balance due way before the due date of August 15.

Once you do that, any charges that you've made since July 18 are going to appear on your August 18 statement, so those are the ones that you want to pay off early, somewhere around 8/15 or 8/16. They won't be due yet, because they haven't even posted as "balance due", and that's your goal --keep them from ever posting. On the card that you want to report a small balance, pay off all of the charges showing except $10 or $20.

When you're trying to figure how much you need to pay, look at something called Account Activity or Current Charges or something similar (varies by lender.) Once you get this going, the balance due will always be $0. Remember, the "balance due" is the amount that showed on last month's statement, not your current unbilled charges floating around in the ether.

This generally makes people cross-eyed at first until you start doing this, and then it makes sense. Just remember that you're going to pay the charges that you've made that have never actually been billed to you by your credit card company. In that way, you're keeping the card active, you're accruing rewards if any, you're not paying any interest, and you're having minimal reported util.

Hope I didn't make you completely crazy there...