When fixing up properties, whether to rent or sell, I make lots of purchases from Home Depot. I don’t want to use my personal card, because it will affect my credit score in 2 ways.
First, by raising my debt to available credit ratio, and
Second, by raising my debt to income ratio.
Home Depot has several options for credit accounts.
Two of them are business accounts. One is for a commercial revolving charge card. This means that I can carry a balance and make payments as I want. The other business option is a commercial account. With this account you pay it off in full every month – or every 2 months – depending on how your accounts payable is run.
When I went to fill out the online application for the revolving charge account, I came upon the question of how much does my company make annually and how much do we take in monthly? As a new business with no income yet, I was flummoxed. How do I respond? Zero would be the true answer – but that seems like a bad answer for a credit application. The optimistically projected monthly sales will look more like $260,000 in gross revenue. What to write?
CUSTOMER SERVICE?
After going crazy calling every number on the website, I finally got hold of a very nice real live person by calling 800-466-3337 and not responding to any of the recorded lists of options which just send you into more automated processes and keep asking for your account number. After four and a half minutes, I was connected to a live customer service person who transferred me to a credit service person, a lovely woman named Peggy. She made some inquiries and told me to put zero on the form and they would contact me for further information. I did, and they did.
Ultimately, I ended up with a commercial revolving charge account. My limit is $5000. This is less than I would like to have, but will still be helpful with record-keeping for each project.
THE LESSON HERE:
It took me hours to get the credit account set up and then to put in my first online order. Best to set up your credit accounts at least 2 weeks in advance of when you think you will need to use them.
