Every question,
answered plainly.

US small business owners who want to build business credit that is separate from personal credit — including LLC and corporation owners at any stage from pre-EIN through actively raising capital. Sterling is not a fit for consumer credit repair, for businesses outside the United States, or for owners who need CPA-level tax advice. It is a fit for owners who plan to apply for Net-30 vendor terms, business credit cards, SBA loans, or working capital lines within the next 12–24 months.

Sterling generates a personalized roadmap driven by your actual entity setup and current bureau data — not a generic checklist. It ships an AI coach trained on business credit playbooks, a curated Net-30 vendor database with real reporting reliability data, a compliance center for BOI/annual report tracking, and lender-ready PDF exports. Nav is primarily a score-monitoring dashboard. Tillful is focused on cashflow and consumer-to-business bridge. Credit Suite is a course + service. Sterling is a software product with recurring guided actions.

No. Sterling can walk you through EIN application and DUNS registration even if your entity is not fully formed yet. Once your entity is filed with the state, Sterling's EIN wizard walks you through the IRS SS-4 questions field by field. Sterling does not file your LLC for you — that is a Secretary of State function — but it will tell you the order of operations so you do not have to reissue an EIN because your entity name changed.

Establishing a Paydex score of 80 or higher typically takes 90–120 days of active vendor reporting once your entity, EIN, DUNS, and initial Net-30 vendor accounts are in place. Reaching lender-grade credit (Paydex 80+, three Net-30 tradelines reporting, D&B file complete, SBFE data reporting) usually takes 6–12 months. Sterling's roadmap sequences these steps and updates monthly based on actual bureau data.

Sterling has three plans: Monitor at $29 per month, Builder at $79 per month, and Accelerate at $149 per month. All plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card required at signup. Monitor covers credit score tracking. Builder adds the AI-generated roadmap, AI Coach, full vendor database, credit card recommender, and lender-ready reports. Accelerate adds unlimited AI Coach, biweekly roadmap regeneration, and the exclusive Net-30 vendor set.

Yes — 14 days on every plan, no credit card required to start. You get full access to the plan you choose for 14 days. If you do not add a payment method by the end of the trial, the account pauses and your data is retained for 90 days in case you want to reactivate. There is no per-transaction fee and no setup fee.

Yes. You can cancel from your billing settings in one click at any time. Cancellation stops future billing. Your account remains active through the end of your current paid period, then you retain read-only access to your data for 90 days. There are no early termination fees and no long-term contracts.

The 14-day free trial serves as the built-in refund window. After a paid month begins, Sterling does not offer partial-month refunds — you keep access for the full period you paid for. If you were charged unexpectedly (missed cancellation, duplicate charge) contact support within 30 days and Sterling will resolve it.

Not currently. Sterling is monthly-only. This is deliberate — business credit building has natural quarterly checkpoints and Sterling does not want customers locked in beyond a month if the product is not delivering results. If you want to prepay several months for budgeting reasons, contact support.

Sterling analyzes your current entity setup (EIN, DUNS status, existing tradelines, bureau scores) and generates a personalized 12–18 month sequence of actions organized in three phases: Foundation (months 0–3), Build (months 3–9), and Scale (months 9–18). Each action is tied to a specific outcome — open Uline Net-30 account, request D&B PAYDEX update, apply for Amex Blue Business Cash — with expected timelines. The roadmap regenerates monthly (or biweekly on Accelerate) based on what has actually been reported to the bureaus.

A curated database of vendors that extend Net-30 terms to new businesses and report those tradelines to at least one major business credit bureau (D&B, Experian Business, or Equifax SBFE). Each vendor entry includes application requirements, minimum order, reporting reliability, typical time to first report, and category. The Explorer tool lets you filter by bureau, industry, and approval difficulty. Only vendors that Sterling has verified as actively reporting are listed.

The AI Coach is a chat interface trained on business credit playbooks, IRS guidance, vendor terms, and bureau documentation. Ask specific questions — 'my Uline account is not showing on my D&B report after 60 days, what do I do' — and the coach gives specific next steps, references the vendor and bureau documentation, and suggests when to escalate. Builder includes 50 messages per day. Accelerate is unlimited. The Coach does not provide legal or tax advice.

The Compliance Center tracks the recurring filings a small business must maintain to preserve its credit file: NAP (name/address/phone) consistency across bureaus, annual state reports, Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting, franchise tax deadlines, and DUNS profile refresh. It stores your compliance documents in an encrypted vault, tracks expiration dates, and logs every material change to your business record as an audit trail. Missing an annual report can silently drop your D&B score by 30+ points — the Compliance Center prevents that.

Sterling generates PDF reports formatted for SBA lenders, traditional bank loan officers, and alternative lenders. Each report includes your current Paydex, Experian Business, and Equifax SBFE scores, active tradelines with reporting history, business entity summary, and compliance status. Builder includes 3 basic reports per month. Accelerate includes unlimited detailed reports with the payment-history breakdown lenders typically request during underwriting.

Yes. Four free tools live at joinsterling.io/tools: the Paydex Estimator (estimates your likely Paydex given tradeline history), BCC Quick Match (matches you to business credit cards you likely qualify for), Net-30 Vendor Explorer (browse the vendor database read-only), and EIN Format Validator (checks whether an EIN is structurally valid). No signup required.

Yes. Sterling's EIN wizard walks you through the IRS Form SS-4 questions one by one, explains each field, and flags the answers most people get wrong. Getting an EIN is free from the IRS — Sterling does not charge for the EIN itself. The wizard exists to prevent the rejection-and-restart loop that costs founders weeks. Online applications through IRS.gov typically issue the EIN in the same session.

Yes. Sterling's DUNS wizard walks you through Dun & Bradstreet's free DUNS request process — which is deliberately buried on D&B's site because they upsell paid CreditBuilder services. Sterling shows you how to get the DUNS at no cost and how to submit the initial NAP data cleanly so your D&B file starts clean. Free DUNS applications take 30 days by mail or can be requested electronically for faster turnaround.

Yes, for business credit. The EIN is your IRS tax identifier — every US bank, vendor, and lender requires it. The DUNS is D&B's unique business identifier — required to report tradelines to D&B and to have a Paydex score generated. Without a DUNS, you cannot build a D&B credit file, which cuts off the majority of Net-30 vendor reporting.

Yes. Sterling encrypts sensitive identity data (EIN, DUNS, addresses, phone numbers) at rest using AES-256-GCM with per-account keys. Passwords are handled by Supabase Auth with bcrypt hashing. Payments are processed by Stripe — Sterling never sees or stores card numbers. Access to production data is limited to the founder engineering team and logged. Sterling has not experienced a data breach.

No. Sterling does not sell, rent, or share your business or personal data with third parties for marketing purposes. Data is shared only with the vendors you explicitly choose to apply to (via the Guided Fill overlay you initiate), payment processing (Stripe), authentication (Supabase), and analytics that measure product usage in aggregate. Full details are in the Privacy Policy at joinsterling.io/privacy.

No. Sterling is a business credit building platform, not a credit repair service. Sterling does not dispute items on your credit report, negotiate with creditors on your behalf, or attempt to remove accurate negative information. Sterling helps you build a business credit file from the correct steps — entity, EIN, DUNS, tradelines, ongoing compliance. Business credit and consumer credit are different systems and Sterling operates only in the business credit space.

No. Sterling provides software-generated recommendations based on business credit building playbooks and public bureau guidance. Sterling is not a law firm, CPA firm, or licensed financial advisor. For legal advice on entity structure, tax elections, or contract terms, consult a licensed attorney or CPA. Sterling's roadmap and AI Coach explicitly recommend consulting a professional when a question requires licensed judgment.

The three major US business credit bureaus: Dun & Bradstreet (Paydex score, D&B credit file), Experian Business (Intelliscore, Business Credit Score), and Equifax Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE data). Sterling updates scores on the Builder and Accelerate plans on their published refresh cadence — bureau data typically lags 15–45 days from actual tradeline activity.

D&B's Paydex updates when a reporting vendor submits payment history — typically monthly for active accounts. If a vendor reports quarterly (some do), your Paydex will only reflect that account's payments quarterly. Sterling shows the last known Paydex plus the estimated next-update window based on your specific tradeline mix. Payments made after the vendor's report cutoff will not appear until the next cycle.

The Small Business Financial Exchange is a data cooperative that pools business credit performance data across member lenders — most large US banks report to SBFE. Equifax's business scores draw heavily on SBFE data, and SBA lenders often pull SBFE reports during underwriting. A business with strong D&B and Experian scores but no SBFE presence can still be denied a bank line because the underwriter has no SBFE data to price against. Sterling's roadmap includes actions that specifically build SBFE-reportable history.