The example report
Read a real report before you order one.
Below is a complete TransUnion screening report, shown the way it appears in your YieldShield Vantage portal, with a guide to every section. The applicant is fictional and the data is a bureau test file, but nothing about the document has been simplified for display. This is the shape of the thing you will be deciding on.
Everything here is included at $38
One flat fee plus applicable sales tax, paid by the applicant, with no tiers and nothing held back for an upgrade.
01
How to read it
Eight passes, in the order your eye should travel
A bureau report is dense because it is complete, not because it is complicated. Read it in this order and the whole document takes about five minutes.
01
Start with identity, not the score
The top of the credit section is an identity check disguised as a header. It carries the name the bureau has on file, an SSN match message, the addresses reported for this person over time, and any employer on record.
Read it against the application in front of you. Names, addresses and employers that line up are the quiet signal that the rest of the file belongs to the person you are actually talking to.
Find it by SSN Message · Current Address · Previous Address · Employment
02
ResidentScore, and the reasons underneath it
The score runs on a 350 to 850 scale and is TransUnion's rental-performance model, not a general-purpose credit score. It is trained on rental outcomes, so it weighs the things that precede a bad tenancy rather than the things that precede a missed loan payment.
Beside it sits a short list of key factors, in the bureau's own words, describing what pushed the number where it landed. Those factors are the useful part: they turn a number into something you can ask about.
Find it by Resident Score · Key factor(s) which may affect your score
03
The profile summary is your thirty-second read
Record counts tell you the shape of the file before you read a line of it: how many tradelines, how many collections, how many public records, how many recent inquiries. Directly under it, the derogatory block counts negative accounts and how often negatives have occurred historically.
A thin file with two accounts and a thick file with twenty are different reading problems. This block tells you which one you have.
Find it by Record Counts · Derogatory Items · Tradeline Summary
04
Tradelines: how this person actually pays
Each tradeline is one account. The fields that matter for a tenancy are the status line, the past-due amount, and the month-by-month payment history grid, which shows whether lateness is a pattern or a bad stretch three years ago.
Terms, balance and payment amount give you the other half of the picture: what this applicant is already committed to every month, before rent.
Find it by Status · Past Due · Payment Amount · Remarks · payment history
05
Collections and public records
Collections are accounts a creditor gave up on and sold or assigned. Each one shows who is collecting, the original creditor where reported, the balance, and the date, which is what tells you whether you are looking at something recent or something the applicant has long since moved past.
Public records cover court-reported financial matters such as bankruptcies. They are rare, and they are worth reading closely rather than reacting to.
Find it by Collections · Public Records · Date Verified
06
Inquiries
Inquiries list who has pulled this file recently. A burst of them in a short window usually just means someone is shopping, whether for a home, a car or a card. It is context, not a verdict.
Find it by Inquiries
07
The criminal search, and what it can and cannot return
The criminal section reports each search that ran, the jurisdiction it covered, and the strategy used, then states plainly whether there were reportable records. A clean result reads as No Reportable Records against every search performed.
Coverage is not unlimited, and the report says so. The Criminal Report and Eviction Related Proceedings Report are subject to federal, state, and local laws that may limit or restrict the ability to return some records. Certain jurisdictions may limit what records are eligible for return.
Find it by Criminal and Public Records · Search Strategy · Sanctions
08
Eviction and housing records
The housing section reports eviction-related proceedings found in the jurisdictions searched, with the same completion dates and the same statement when nothing is found.
An eviction filing is a court record, not a judgment about a person. Read what it says, note the date, and apply the same criteria you would apply to any other applicant.
Find it by Housing Records · Completion Date
02
The score
What ResidentScore is
ResidentScore is TransUnion's rental-performance score. It is not a general-purpose credit score: it is engineered to predict how a tenancy is likely to go, rather than how someone repays borrowed money.
TransUnion prepares and furnishes it. YieldShield does not calculate, retain, evaluate, or use it, and makes no decision from it.
It runs on a 350 to 850 scale and reads payment history, balances against available credit, length of history, credit availability and recent inquiries through a rental lens. It can also score a thin file, as long as the applicant has at least one account reporting.
TransUnion reports that at the low end of the scale the model identifies 15 percent more evictions and 19 percent more skips than a conventional scoring model does.
The full credit report is delivered alongside it.
03
The report
The sample, in full
Scroll it here or open it in its own tab. It prints the way it reads.
Sample · Fictional applicant, real report format
View full sample report (opens in a new tab)Loading the sample report…
Identity verificationNot shown here
A knowledge-based identity challenge the applicant completes themselves, before any report is ordered. It is a limited check rather than a documentary verification, and it is TransUnion's own.
Bank income reportNot shown here
Only where you offer it on a property. Applicants there are asked whether to give a written instruction for one, and it is delivered when they do and Plaid Check can produce it. Plaid Consumer Reporting Agency, Inc., doing business as Plaid Check, a consumer reporting agency, prepares it as a separate document from the TransUnion report.
Identity verification is part of every screening; a bank income report is part of a screening only where you offer it and the applicant gives a written instruction for one. This sample was captured from the three report sections above, so neither appears in the document.
04
Then what
Reading it is the easy half. The decision has rules.
Decide against criteria you set before you read
Written criteria, applied the same way to every applicant, are what make a decision defensible later. You write your own, in your own words. We set no threshold, no score and no standard, we never apply your criteria, and we never decide for you. The notice served to every applicant prints in full the grounds for denial that state law names, whether or not you mention any of them.
If the answer is no, the notice is yours to send
If you decline, the notice to the applicant is yours to send. We put the template TransUnion publishes, the contact details of each agency that furnished a report, and a link to each report in one place, and keep a record that you acknowledged the notice is yours.
We keep the decision, not the TransUnion report
A TransUnion report is rendered to you when you open it and is not kept at rest afterwards. A bank income report, where there is one, is deleted automatically 30 days after Plaid Check prepares it, or sooner. What we retain permanently is every notice exactly as it was served, which is the part anyone would ever ask you to produce.
Now run one on your next applicant.
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