Yes they can. If the CA has contracted collection authority from the OC, or if they have purchased the entire debt from the OC, they can report at any time the debt that remains unpaid.
They can choose to report to no one, to only one CRA, or to two or three, Their option. Any time.
Dont look at it as reporting of an "account." It is really the reporting of a derog.
You, as a consumer, have only one legal "account," and that is with the original creditor (OC).
If an OC places a debt with a collection agency, then that gives the CA the right to post a totally different "account" with the CRA.
This is referred to as a CA account. It is strickly between the CA and CRA, and not an account with you. All a CA can report is the date the collection was intitiated, and then monthly updates of its status as unpaid, paid in part, paid in full, or deleted. That is what they update. They can update NO information in your OC account, which is stored in a toally separate section of your credit file. What they "update" really has no significance to FICO scoring, period. FICO uses only the posting of the CA itself in scoring.
If it is not in your credit file, it cannot be scored by FICO. That is where FICO derives all of its scoring data.
But the CA can add it at any time if a legit collection with unpaid debt.
