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Credit Academy

Guides written by people who build credit software.

Deep, operational guides to the craft of commercial credit — analysis, policy, construction credit, and collections. Every guide is written and maintained by SGUTTI, Founder, EFILOS.

Credit Operations

How to Evaluate Credit Management Software: Ten Questions to Ask Any Vendor

A practical evaluation framework for buying B2B credit software: ten questions that separate a good demo from a good product, what a strong answer sounds like, and when you do not need a platform at all.

12 min read

Credit Operations

Building a Credit Watchlist That Catches Deterioration Early

How to design credit watchlists that work: choosing signals that lead rather than lag, writing entry and exit criteria, sizing the list to the capacity that works it, and tuning it once it is live.

11 min read

Financial Analysis

How to Evaluate a Supplier's Financial Health

A credit analyst's method applied to the vendors you buy from: what to request, which ratios predict a supplier failing rather than a customer defaulting, what to do when they will not share financials, and how to turn the analysis into a decision.

11 min read

Tax & Compliance

Tax Exemption Certificates: A Guide for Credit and AR Teams

What an exemption certificate is, who issues it, why the seller carries the audit exposure rather than the buyer, and what a credit department is actually responsible for keeping on file.

12 min read

Financial Analysis

How to Analyze Financial Statements for Trade Credit Decisions

A practitioner's guide to reading customer financial statements for trade credit: which statements to request, the ratios that actually predict payment, red flags, and how to convert analysis into limits and terms.

10 min read

Financial Analysis

Credit Scorecards: How Weighted Scoring Works

How weighted credit scorecards actually work: choosing components, normalizing scales, setting weights, cascading thresholds into risk bands, mapping bands to actions, and keeping the model calibrated.

10 min read

Construction Credit

Mechanics Liens: A Guide for Credit Managers

How mechanics liens turn construction receivables into securable debt: who has lien rights, the notice and filing deadline chain, how preserved rights justify higher credit limits, and how to operationalize compliance.

11 min read

Construction Credit

Lien Waivers Explained: The Four Types and How Not to Sign Away Your Rights

A working guide to lien waivers for suppliers and credit teams: the four waiver types, the conditional-vs-unconditional rule, statutory forms, the traps hidden in waiver language, and how to build a waiver workflow.

10 min read

Credit Policy

How to Write a Credit Policy That Your Team Actually Uses

A section-by-section guide to writing a B2B credit policy: investigation tiers, approval authority matrices, exception handling, and a starter outline you can adapt in a week.

11 min read

Credit Policy

Setting Credit Limits: A Practical Framework with Worked Math

Six credit limit methods with worked examples, from percentage of tangible net worth to requirement-based calculations, plus how to adjust for security, handle seasonal peaks, and monitor utilization.

12 min read

Collections & DSO

The DSO Reduction Playbook: Levers Ranked by ROI

How to actually reduce DSO: the math and its variants, why DSO moves, seven reduction levers ranked by return on effort with expected impact ranges, and the weekly cadence that sustains the gains.

12 min read

Collections & DSO

Collections Workflow Design: Dunning Sequences, Prioritization, and Escalation

How to design a B2B collections workflow: segment-based dunning sequences, a day-by-day timeline, promise-to-pay discipline, prioritization beyond aging, collector capacity math, and the KPIs that prove it works.

14 min read

See these workflows running in SCREDIT.

Everything in these guides — scorecards, limits, waivers, dunning sequences — exists as a working workflow in the product.