topic Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance? in Credit Cards

Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

JenW83 — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:08:01 GMT

Okay.. so I just paid off my Amex, so my current balance is $0.00. I am working on paying off all my cc debt to help my utilization, and ultimately raise my credit scores.

Unfortunately, when I looked at my most recent statement, it shows the amount from before I paid off my card.

My question is: Is it your current balance, or your statement balance that credit card companies report to your credit report? And if it's your statement balance, does that mean I'll have to wait another 30 days before the payoff is updated? 🥺

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Remedios — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:12:54 GMT

For Amex, it's statement balance.

Current balance won't be reflected until they report again.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:18:55 GMT

The statement balance gets reported. It sounds like perhaps whatever payment you made didn't post in time / wasn't reflected on your account and that the previous "current" balance got reported as a result. I would double check your payment date/time and make sure you weren't hit with an unnecessary late fee.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

JenW83 — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:20:56 GMT

Darn. That was what I was afraid of. I was going by my "balance updated" date on my Experian report to have my payment in by, but it looks like my statement date is different from that. 😭

Thank you for the insight! I guess I'll just have to wait another 30 days to have the payoff reported.

@Remedios wrote:
For Amex, it's statement balance.
Current balance won't be reflected until they report again.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

JenW83 — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:22:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
The statement balance gets reported. It sounds like perhaps whatever payment you made didn't post in time / wasn't reflected on your account and that the previous "current" balance got reported as a result. I would double check your payment date/time and make sure you weren't hit with an unnecessary late fee.

I had already made other payments throughout the month, so my minimum payment was already taken care of. (No fear of a late fee) I was just trying to time my "payoff" so it would reflect on this month's reporting. I guess I missed the mark.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Remedios — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:27:09 GMT

@JenW83 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
The statement balance gets reported. It sounds like perhaps whatever payment you made didn't post in time / wasn't reflected on your account and that the previous "current" balance got reported as a result. I would double check your payment date/time and make sure you weren't hit with an unnecessary late fee.
I had already made other payments throughout the month, so my minimum payment was already taken care of. (No fear of a late fee) I was just trying to time my "payoff" so it would reflect on this month's reporting. I guess I missed the mark.

@JenW83 if you're trying to show $0 balance, you might want to call them and find out what is the full payment amount including the interest.

I'm not sure where Amex cut off is small balance reporting wise, but if you're paying more than five or seven dollars and interest that will show up on your next statement unless you pay that, too.

Only Amex CSR can tell you total payoff amount

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

K-in-Boston — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:26:39 GMT

With few exceptions, almost all lenders will solely report the statement balance of credit cards to the credit bureaus. Two oft-cited examples are that US Bank only reports your balance on the last day of the month and that Chase will report a $0.00 balance to the credit bureaus any time the account balance is brought down to zero. The "last updated" date on credit reports is when the information was supplied by the lender and processed by the credit bureau and in most cases will not be the same as the statement date.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

staticvoidmain — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:59:38 GMT

(I always looked at it as "current balance" at the date of the statement cutoff. Never really realized it was the statement balance.)

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 22:19:27 GMT

@staticvoidmain wrote:
(I always looked at it as "current balance" at the date of the statement cutoff. Never really realized it was the statement balance.)

If you look at your statement as a snapshot taken of your account at the moment the statement closes, your current balance of your account will become the statement balance of that statement. Transactions posted prior to statement close will appear on your statement and will be reflected on your statement balance while transctions posted after will update your current balance right away but won't appear on a statement until it cuts again,

With online account access nowadays you can see your account where it is at the moment. Statement balance only matters in terms of what payment is due on that statement and is also the balance subject to the grace period, if any. For most issuers, statement balance is also what gets sent to the CRAs to determine utilization (US Bank being one outlier... and Chase if you pay to zero, will report the zero balance right away, but otherwise they also report statement balance).

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Bladematthewslp — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 07:17:50 GMT

I just encountered a similar issue. I paid the balance down to zero and wanted the credit bureaus to know that my balance is zero immediately so that my credit utilization ratio can be updated now, not 30 days from now during the routine reporting to the credit bureaus. So after the current balance went to zero, I contacted the credit card company (Synchrony Bank in this case) and told them to report my zero balance now. They went ahead and made the request and said the bureaus should have the updated zero dollar balance within 24-48 hours.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

JenW83 — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 14:22:53 GMT

@Bladematthewslp wrote:
I just encountered a similar issue. I paid the balance down to zero and wanted the credit bureaus to know that my balance is zero immediately so that my credit utilization ratio can be updated now, not 30 days from now during the routine reporting to the credit bureaus. So after the current balance went to zero, I contacted the credit card company (Synchrony Bank in this case) and told them to report my zero balance now. They went ahead and made the request and said the bureaus should have the updated zero dollar balance within 24-48 hours.

Oh, I didn't know you could do that! Do you think Amex would be willing to update a zero balance as well? Or has anyone had any success with getting them to update a zero balance to help utilization numbers?

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Bladematthewslp — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 15:57:26 GMT

It's worth a shot. I didn't know Synchrony did it until I asked how to force update the credit reporting agencies after making a payment. Maybe AMEX will do ti for you as well. I can let you know how it goes in a day or two if I see that my credit reports reflect a zero balance on my Synchrony account like they said it should.

Re: Current Balance vs. Statement Balance?

Bladematthewslp — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 06:03:19 GMT

Update: I can confirm that Synchrony Bank did force update the credit bureaus upon request, reporting a zero dollar balance within 48 hours. On the same day that the balance was reported to be zero dollars, I applied for a new credit card and was approved.