Paydex is one commercial-credit measure, not a universal funding gate. Providers may consider payment history, revenue, personal credit, a guarantee, collateral, cash flow, and other information, and no reporting plan guarantees a particular score or timeline.
This pillar post walks the five-section arc every Town Mayor Financial client runs to land a Paydex above 80. Section one defines the 1–100 scale and explains why D&B's banding at 80 makes the difference between a denied application and a clean approval. Section two breaks down what actually feeds the score — supplier payment reports dominate, financials and public records only back-fill the tail. Section three walks the net-30 vs net-15 vs net-60 weighting math. Section four covers the milestone scores at approximately 65, 75, and 80, and what each unlocks. Section five closes with the 3–6 month timeline a founder should plan for, starting from a brand-new EIN. Read it end to end, or jump to the section that matches where your entity is today.
Section 1 — The 1–100 scale (and why 80 is the line that matters)
Paydex is Dun & Bradstreet's small-business credit score, calculated on a 1-to-100 scale. The number reflects one thing: how promptly the business pays its bills. A score of 80 means you pay roughly twenty days early, on average, across the trade lines reporting to D&B. A score of 100 means every payable in the file clears inside of thirty days, with no stragglers. A score of 50 means half your payables are dragging past terms. Below 40, D&B flags the file as a higher-risk trade — the kind vendors stop approving net terms for.
A Paydex value should be read in context. D&B and lenders may use different risk bands, models, and application criteria, and a score does not establish a universal approval threshold. Lendavo can organize potential matches, but it is not a lender or approval guarantee.
Ten questions, three minutes. We read your entity age, your existing vendor footprint, and your D&B file presence, then return a personalised Paydex readiness score plus a 3-step plan for the vendor tier you should open first. No email gate. The score tells you exactly which tradeline you are ready to start with.
Section 2 — What D&B feeds into the Paydex (and what it doesn't)
D&B builds the Paydex almost entirely from supplier payment reports. Vendor accounts that report to D&B — Uline, Quill, Grainger, Crown Office Supplies, AmSquare — file a payment experience on the entity every cycle. Each experience is bucketed by D&B as either on-time, slow, or unpaid, and the weight of those buckets across the file becomes the score. Pay every vendor inside of twenty-five days across two reporting cycles and the Paydex moves into the 80s. Pay one vendor late twice and the file sits in the 60s for a quarter.
The inputs that back-fill the tail — and only the tail — are financials and public records. D&B pulls business credit, court filings, UCC liens, and bankruptcy flags from public records and tucks them under the score as a confidence layer. They do not move the Paydex on their own, and they do not get the score off the floor when the vendor reports are missing or stale. The vendor reports are the load-bearing piece. An entity with three clean vendor reports, no financials, and no public-record hits will out-Paydex an entity with strong financials and zero trade lines reporting. D&B is built to read the file, not balance.
A guide to reviewing an entity's EIN, business account, and vendor-reporting relationships. Personal credit, guarantees, cash, revenue, collateral, and other criteria may apply.
Section 3 — The net-30 vs net-15 vs net-60 weighting math
Paydex is calculated as an experience-weighted average — every dollar you owe across every reporting account runs through the formula, and the days-past-terms on that dollar set the score. Pay inside of thirty days on a net-30 account and the experience reads as on-time. Pay inside of fifteen days on a net-15 account and the experience reads as on-time. Pay in two months on a net-60 account and the experience reads as on-time. The variable that matters is not the day you pay, it is the relationship between the day you pay and the terms the vendor files.
The implication is that early-pay on net-15 is the strongest single signal D&B can record. An entity that pays every net-15 vendor inside of ten days — twelve days early on the longest terms — will out-Paydex an entity that pays net-60 vendors inside of fifty days, even though both are paying early on their respective cycles. Currency-heavy vendor footprints (Uline, Quill, Grainger, Crown Office Supplies) all run net-30 by default, and that is the Paydex-80 ceiling most entities target. To push above an 82 or 83, founders add a small set of net-15 or net-10 vendor lines — typically Crown Office Supplies or a fuel-card tier — and the average term shrinks to fifteen days without lifting the total dollar volume. The math is the math: the shorter the terms, the higher the Paydex ceiling.
Curated intros, not mass-market offers. Lendavo reads the EIN file and shows the capital products that close for a profile in the Paydex 70-to-80 band, in the order they should be hit. Use it once the revolving vendors have reported clean — every avoided hard pull is one more approval runway for later. The vendors built the file. Lendavo turns it into capital.
Section 4 — The milestone scores (65, 75, 80) and what each unlocks
Three scores are the milestones every founder should plan around. The first is 65 — the threshold where vendors stop asking for upfront deposits and start approving net terms on a brand-new entity with no payment history. The Paydex 65 band is the cliff vendors like Uline and Quill read at to gap their new-account audit; below 65 they ask for cash on delivery, above 65 they approve net-30. Crossing 65 is the moment every revolving vendor account starts compounding a real file instead of a placeholder.
Different lenders may use Paydex and other commercial-credit data differently. Ask which model, range, data sources, revenue, time-in-business, personal-credit, guarantee, collateral, and other criteria apply before treating a score as meaningful for a specific application.
Twenty minutes, free, no obligation. We walk your EIN file against the vendor launch order and tier the milestone scores your entity should hit, and the next concrete step for getting there.
Section 5 — The 3–6 month timeline from a brand-new EIN
A brand-new EIN with no file today can land a Paydex 80 in three to six months, on a single rotating cadence. The first month is the bank anchor — Relay, North One, or Mercury — plus the DUNS registration through the free Dun & Bradstreet flow. The DUNS lands in two business days. The bank anchor gets verified by D&B as the operating account on the file by the end of week two. By month two, vendors can run a thin-file audit on the entity and the Paydex sits in the 60s — not yet 65, but crossing.
Months two through four are the cadence. Uline opens in the first week of month two, and the first Paydex-relevant report fires after the second on-time payoff. Quill opens on day sixty of Uline reporting — month three — and the Paydex crosses 75 once Quill has reported twice. Grainger opens on day ninety of Quill reporting — month four — and the Paydex crosses 80 by month five once all three vendors report clean twice. The cadence compounds, not the speed: every revolving vendor added in order adds another on-time report to the file, and the Paydex climbs two to three points per reporting cycle. Book the call once the Paydex clears 75. The Lendavo graph turns the file into term-loan approvals the same quarter.