Credit Report Review Checklist: What to Look For

Your take-away checklist

1. Personal information: read the name, former names, addresses, birth date and phone numbers against your own identification and address history, and mark anything you have never used or lived at.
2. Decide what that first section changed: if a strange name or address appeared, check ownership on every account below before you check any figure.
3. Pick one account and note where it sits — report page, creditor name, and the last four digits — so a later note can point at it exactly.
4. Set the comparison document beside it: the statement closest in date to the report, plus any closure letter or payoff confirmation for that account.
5. Confirm both documents describe the same account and the same period before you treat any difference as a difference.
6. Compare one field at a time — status, current balance, credit limit, date opened, date of last payment, date of first delinquency — and write the report's figure, your document's figure, and the date each one carries.
7. For anything that looks too old, note the entry type and the date it appears to run from, and check the reporting period before flagging it.
8. Write your concern in your own words for each field you flagged, keeping what the documents say separate from what you suspect.
9. File the report, the comparison documents and this sheet together, and note the date you completed the pass.