Sterling guides US small business owners through building business credit. Personalized 12 to 18 month roadmap, a tracked Net-30 vendor database, Paydex tracking, and lender ready reports. Separate from you.
—Filed by the Sterling desk·Est. 2026
Illustrative product interface · sample data · not a customer result
Why business credit needs to be built separate from you, deliberately.
Every credit card, every equipment lease, every net-30 with a supplier. The business defaults, your FICO drops. The business gets sued, your assets go too.
D&B Paydex. Experian Business. Equifax SBFE. None of them talk to FICO. Your 780 personal score means nothing here. Zero record, zero approval.
Paydex above 80. DUNS age above 12 months. Three trade lines reporting. Utilization under 30%. No amount of relationship building substitutes for a clean profile.
You have to build a business credit record the way lenders read it. That is exactly what Sterling does.
US small businesses
SBA Small Business Profile 2025
personally guarantee every business obligation
D&B Business Credit Study
Net-30 vendors tracked, with bureau reporting flags
Sterling vendor database
Building business credit isn’t a signup and a wait. Here is what actually happens, quarter by quarter, and the milestones Sterling times, tracks, and reports against.
LLC or corp is formed. EIN issued. DUNS filed. Every registration lists the same legal name and address. This is the ground the file is going to grow from.
Business bank account opened. Dedicated business phone verified. NAP consistent across state records, D&B, and the IRS. Vendors can now find the same business, everywhere.
Three Net-30 vendors have delivered, invoiced, and been paid on time. The D&B file flips from pending to active. Paydex opens at 60 and starts moving.
The threshold most vendors screen for. Store cards start approving. Suppliers extend to Net-60 without asking for a personal guarantee.
Chase Ink, Amex Business, Capital One Spark. First business credit cards open on the business file with the personal guarantee shrinking or gone.
Amazon Business, Home Depot Commercial, Grainger Fleet. Five-figure trade limits. Purchase orders that don't touch your personal balance sheet.
Business line of credit conversations become real. Term loan applications land in front of underwriters instead of software. SBA-eligible profile in place.
The business borrows in its own name. Your personal FICO stops being the bottleneck for growth. Cash flow, risk, and reputation are separated.
LLC or corp is formed. EIN issued. DUNS filed. Every registration lists the same legal name and address. This is the ground the file is going to grow from.
Business bank account opened. Dedicated business phone verified. NAP consistent across state records, D&B, and the IRS. Vendors can now find the same business, everywhere.
Three Net-30 vendors have delivered, invoiced, and been paid on time. The D&B file flips from pending to active. Paydex opens at 60 and starts moving.
The threshold most vendors screen for. Store cards start approving. Suppliers extend to Net-60 without asking for a personal guarantee.
Chase Ink, Amex Business, Capital One Spark. First business credit cards open on the business file with the personal guarantee shrinking or gone.
Amazon Business, Home Depot Commercial, Grainger Fleet. Five-figure trade limits. Purchase orders that don't touch your personal balance sheet.
Business line of credit conversations become real. Term loan applications land in front of underwriters instead of software. SBA-eligible profile in place.
The business borrows in its own name. Your personal FICO stops being the bottleneck for growth. Cash flow, risk, and reputation are separated.
47 tracked Net-30 vendors with bureau reporting flags (D&B, Experian Business, Equifax), approval difficulty ratings, and minimum business age requirements. Filter by your business age, state, industry, and monthly revenue.
EIN, DUNS, address, bank, first Net-30, second Net-30, first business card, first LOC. 12 to 22 steps, generated for your specific profile.
Log scores from D&B, Experian Business, Equifax SBFE. Trend chart, month over month deltas, and a plain summary of what moved.
One click. Business identity, active trade lines, Paydex history, credit utilization. The document your loan officer will actually read.
Every credit-building tool tracks Paydex. Sterling tracks the operational layer where applications actually die: an address mismatch between your D&B file and the state secretary, an insurance certificate that quietly expired, an annual report filed under a name D&B never got.
The Compliance Center is Sterling’s discipline layer — four modules that run in the background so the credit-building work you already did doesn’t get quietly undone.
Illustrative sample · your dashboard reflects your business
90 seconds. Business name, structure, state, EIN and DUNS status, monthly revenue, credit goal.
3 phases. 18 to 22 steps. Exact vendors, exact URLs, expected approval windows. Regenerate as often as you need.
Every step has a direct link and a timing estimate. Track applications, log Paydex updates, ask the AI coach when stuck.
New revenue tier, new state, new goal. The roadmap re-adjusts. What worked stays, what did not gets replaced.
Roadmaps run 12 months minimum. Business credit rewards showing up consistently, not sprinting.
Every trust signal on this page is something Sterling can prove today. No paid endorsements, no manufactured logos, no fabricated outcomes. When paying customers have quotes worth publishing, they slot into the fourth column below with their signed permission.
Florida limited liability company. Filing publicly verifiable at sunbiz.org. Sterling is a product line of Quarvo. Terms and Privacy live at joinsterling.io/terms and /privacy.
Sensitive fields (EIN, identity data) encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Row-level security on every database table under a deny-all model. Payments handled by Stripe — Sterling never sees card numbers.
Sterling never pulls data from consumer credit bureaus (out of FCRA scope) and does not offer consumer credit repair (CROA does not apply). Business credit reporting is not federally licensed. Sterling gives no legal or financial advice.
Sterling has never paid an influencer, sponsored a review, or invented a testimonial. Customer quotes appear here only after founder-signed permission. Product capabilities on this page are factual — verifiable by starting the 14-day trial.
The goal: a business credit profile that lenders can read on its own — without your SSN carrying the application.
From$29·$79·$149per month · billed monthly · cancel anytime
Track existing credit profile.
Full AI guided building.
Faster path, more leverage.
Building business credit generally takes 6 to 18 months. Phase 1 (EIN, DUNS, basics) typically takes 2 to 4 weeks. Phase 2 (reporting trade lines, first business card) typically takes 3 to 6 months. Phase 3 (larger credit lines and bank relationships) takes longer still. Timelines vary by business and nothing is guaranteed — but anyone promising a shortcut is optimizing for their own signup metric.
No. The whole point is credit that does not depend on you personally. Many starter vendors (Uline, Quill, Grainger) typically base decisions on EIN + DUNS plus a small first order rather than a personal credit check — though every vendor makes its own approval decisions. Bank lines later may pull personal credit.
Nav monitors. Sterling builds. Nav shows your scores; Sterling tells you exactly what to do next to move them. Nav Prime is Nav's paid upsell — still monitoring at heart. Credit Suite is a $2,000+ course; Sterling is $79/mo software. Each comparison below breaks the difference down feature by feature.
You can still start. Phase 1 (EIN, DUNS, address, phone, bank account) requires nothing more than a registered business. Phase 2 starts at month 3 to 6. We pace the roadmap to your actual age. No wasted applications you will get denied for.
You need a registered entity: LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, or registered sole proprietorship with a fictitious name filing. Business credit reports to the business, not the individual, so it needs a legal business identity. Getting an LLC takes 1 to 2 weeks in most states.
Yes. When you refer another operator and they activate their trial, you both get a $20 account credit applied directly to your next invoice. Track referrals from the Refer tab inside the dashboard once you're signed up. No tiers, no gimmicks, no expiration.
Yes, one click from Billing. Your data stays. If you reactivate later, the roadmap and history come back with you.
Every month without a separate credit profile is a month your home stays on the line. 14 days free. No credit card.
Cancel any time. Data stays if you come back.