--- title: "Credit Report & Compliance Glossary | CreditPullEngine" description: "Plain-English definitions of credit report and compliance terms: tradelines, inquiries, charge-offs, permissible purpose, FCRA, utilization and more." url: "https://creditpullengine.com/glossary" --- Glossary # Credit report terms, in plain English. The words your team hears on every call, defined in a sentence or two. Use it to train new agents or to explain a report to a consumer. [Book a Live Demo](/contact/) [Get Sandbox Access](/get-started/) General definitions for education, not legal advice. What's inside Definitions grouped A to Z. Each term links to a CreditPullEngine page where one covers it. - Report terms: tradelines, inquiries, public records - Debt terms: charge-offs, collections, delinquency - Compliance terms: FCRA, permissible purpose, consent - Product terms: API key, sandbox, normalized data [Soft pull vs. hard pull](/blog/guides/soft-pull-vs-hard-pull/) ## A - **Adverse action notice**: A notice a business must give a consumer when it takes a negative action, such as denying credit, based in whole or in part on information in a consumer report. It tells the consumer which reporting agency supplied the report and explains their right to get a free copy and dispute errors. - **API key**: A secret credential your software sends with each API request to identify your account. Keep it out of public code and rotate it if it's exposed. API docs → - **Audit trail**: A record of who did what and when. For credit reports, it logs each pull and each time a report is accessed. Trust & Compliance → - **Authorized user**: A person allowed to use someone else's credit card account. The account may appear on the authorized user's credit report even though they aren't responsible for the debt. ## B - **Balance**: The amount owed on an account as of the date the creditor last reported it. - **Bankruptcy**: A legal process that helps people who can't repay their debts get relief under federal law. Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 are the most common types for individuals, and a bankruptcy can appear on a credit report as a public record. ## C - **Charge-off**: When a creditor writes off a debt as a loss after a long period of missed payments. The consumer still owes the debt, and it may be sold or sent to a collection agency. - **Collection account**: A debt that the original creditor has turned over or sold to a collection agency. It usually appears on the report as a separate account and is considered a derogatory item. - **Consent**: The consumer's authorization for a business to obtain their credit report. Written consent is one way a business can establish a permissible purpose. Trust & Compliance → - **Consumer report**: The legal term in the FCRA for information a consumer reporting agency provides about a person's credit history and related characteristics. A credit report is the most common type. - **Consumer reporting agency**: A company that collects and sells information about consumers for use in decisions about credit, insurance, employment and similar purposes. Credit bureaus are the best-known examples. - **Credit limit**: The maximum amount a lender allows a consumer to borrow on a revolving account, such as a credit card. - **Credit report**: A record of a consumer's credit history: accounts, balances, payment history, inquiries and public records, along with identifying information. Credit Reports → - **Credit score**: A number calculated from the information in a credit report that estimates how likely a consumer is to repay debt. Different scoring models can produce different scores from the same report. - **Credit utilization**: The share of available revolving credit a consumer is using: total revolving balances divided by total credit limits. Lower utilization is generally viewed more favorably. Scorecast → ## D - **Debt settlement**: An agreement in which a creditor accepts less than the full balance to resolve a debt. Settled accounts are usually reported as settled rather than paid in full. - **Debt-to-income ratio**: Monthly debt payments divided by gross monthly income. Lenders use it to judge whether a borrower can take on another payment. - **Delinquency**: A payment that is past due. Accounts are usually reported as delinquent in 30-day steps, such as 30, 60 or 90 days late. - **Derogatory mark**: A negative item on a credit report, such as a late payment, collection account, charge-off or bankruptcy. - **Dispute**: A consumer's challenge to information they believe is inaccurate or incomplete on their credit report. Under the FCRA, the reporting agency generally must investigate. ## F - **FCRA**: The Fair Credit Reporting Act, the federal law that governs how consumer report information is collected, shared and used, and gives consumers rights over their reports. ## H - **Hard inquiry**: A record created when a lender checks a consumer's credit as part of an application. Hard inquiries are visible to other lenders and can lower a score slightly for a time. Soft pull vs. hard pull → ## I - **Inquiry**: A record on the credit report showing that someone accessed it. Inquiries are either hard or soft. - **Installment account**: A loan with a fixed number of scheduled payments, such as an auto loan, student loan, personal loan or mortgage. ## L - **Late payment**: A payment made after its due date. Creditors typically report it once it's 30 or more days late, and the severity grows at 60, 90 and 120 days. ## N - **Normalized data**: Data organized into consistent fields and formats, so the same information always arrives the same way and is easy for software to read. Credit Reports → ## O - **One-time passcode**: A short code sent to a person's phone that works once. It confirms the person on the other end controls that phone number. Trust & Compliance → ## P - **Permissible purpose**: A reason the FCRA allows for obtaining a consumer report, such as a credit transaction the consumer initiated or the consumer's written instructions. A business must have one before it pulls a report. Trust & Compliance → - **PII**: Personally identifiable information: data that can identify a specific person, such as a name, address, date of birth or Social Security number. Agent Access → - **Prequalification**: An early look at whether a consumer is likely to qualify for a product, often based on a soft inquiry. It is not an approval. Soft Pull API → - **Public record**: Information from government records that can appear on a credit report. Today this is mainly bankruptcies. ## R - **Reseller**: A company authorized to obtain consumer reports from a credit bureau and provide them to its own business customers. CreditPullEngine is an Authorized Equifax Reseller. About us → - **Revolving account**: An account with a credit limit that the consumer can borrow against, repay and borrow again, such as a credit card or line of credit. ## S - **Sandbox**: A test environment that behaves like the live API but uses sample data, so developers can build and test without pulling real reports. Get Sandbox Access → - **Score simulation**: A what-if estimate of how a change, such as paying down a balance, could affect a credit score. Simulated scores are estimates, not guarantees. Score Simulator → - **Secured debt**: Debt backed by collateral, such as a home for a mortgage or a car for an auto loan. The lender can take the collateral if the loan isn't repaid. - **Soft inquiry**: A credit check that doesn't affect the consumer's credit score, such as a prequalification check or a consumer viewing their own report. Other lenders can't see soft inquiries. Soft pull vs. hard pull → ## T - **Tradeline**: Any account listed on a credit report, along with its details: creditor, account type, balance, credit limit, payment history and status. ## U - **Unsecured debt**: Debt with no collateral behind it, such as credit cards, medical bills and most personal loans. It's the main type of debt handled in debt relief programs. ## Glossary questions. Is this glossary legal advice? No. These are general definitions for education. Talk to your own counsel about how the law applies to your business. What's the difference between a credit report and a credit score? The report is the record of accounts, payments, inquiries and public records. The score is a number calculated from that record. Does a soft inquiry show up on a credit report? It can appear on the consumer's own copy of their report, but other lenders can't see it and it doesn't affect the score. Can I suggest a term? Yes. Contact us and tell us which term your team keeps running into. ## Related - Guide ### Soft pull vs. hard pull What each inquiry type means for the consumer. - Company ### Trust & Compliance How consent, verification and the audit trail work. - Resource ### Compare How CreditPullEngine compares with other kinds of tools. ## See it on a live call. Book a demo and we'll run a pull, the analysis, and a ClearView session with sample data. [Book a Live Demo](/contact/) [Get Sandbox Access](/get-started/)