5 Easy Steps to Rebuild Your Credit after Bankruptcy

bankruptcy, credit, rebuild credit, debt relief, credit score, credit report, debt free


Bankruptcy often is the last ultimate solution for many debtors who have unbearable debts. With filing a bankruptcy, you will get rid of your debts instantly and relief you from the harassing call of your creditors.

Although bankruptcy has many undesirable consequences such as your bad credit record will remain on your credit report for 7-10 years, but with a little work, you can improve your credit even before these negative records expire. Here are five easy steps you can take to rebuild your credit.

<b>Step 1: Get to know your current credit status</b>

The first step to rebuilding your credit is to look at exactly where you stand. Order all your three credit reports from those three national credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You can order these reports online, it easy and secure.

Print each report and review it closely. Try to understand the information listed in your credit reports and highlight any negative records or inaccuracies that are damaging your credit score.

<b>Step 2: Check the expiration dates</b>

By law, your bad credit record will remain in your credit report for 7 to 10 years, but the exact expiry date might be different among these 3 reports. Your bad record will still remain at your credit report although you have pay off your old debts and discharge from bankruptcy.

Look up the exact date of each of bad records including judgments, liens, charge-offs, late payments, bankruptcy filings, and collection records. You will likely see a major improvement in your credit score when these records expire.

<b>Step 3: Request For Correct On Any Inaccurate Records</b>

If you find inaccurate records, fraudulent accounts, or records that should have expired on you credit reports, you have the right to send a separate dispute letter to each of the credit bureaus to correct your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion records. The bureaus will initial a 30 days investigation to see whether your requests are valid and if so, they will correct the inaccuracy in your credit report.

Just one note, don&#39;t try to dispute any of the positive information listed in your credit reports and it is a waste of time to attempt to dispute these records. Disputing positive information may actually harm your credit scores.

<b>Step 4: Start to create good credits</b>

Since there is no way to remove your bad record from your credit report, the best way to improve your credit score is to add good credits and building up your credit from there. You can easy do this by open up a new credit card from banks like Orchard Bank (Orchard bank has credit card plan designed specially to help people rebuild their credit after bankruptcy).

Use this new credit card responsibly and make the monthly payment timely; with this you are building new history of good credit behavior on your credit report. Over time, you may want to open additional credit card accounts or obtain a loan to boost your credit score even higher.

<b>Step 5: Monitor your progress</b>

Subscribe to a credit card monitoring service or get a credit card monitoring software and use it to track your credit score progress closely. Your credit score should improve steadily as you continue to use credit responsibly and add new positive information to your credit reports.

<b>Summary</b>

Bankruptcy does not need to chain you to bad credit for the next seven to ten years, but you have to be proactive in order to recover and rebuild your credit.

Picking out just the right commercial Christmas decoration

Picking out just the right commercial Christmas decoration can be a tough thing for a businessman to do. After all, you have to strike just the right balance. On the one hand, in some areas too heavy of an emphasis on Christian Christmas ornaments can really turn people off of your business. On the other hand, happy holidays decorations are a little bit too generic for most people's tastes.

The best thing to do with your commercial Christmas decorations is to use a lot of decorating ideas without overt religious overtones. Outdoor Christmas lights, snowflake decorations, icicle lights above the door, and even a Santa Clause here or there probably will not offend anyone's sensibilities. Artificial Christmas wreaths on the door can also help to add a warm, cozy feel which is perfect in the winter months.

Of course, some businessmen like to go all out with commercial Christmas decoration. A friend of mine owns a wholesale warehouse downtown, and he is always pretty enthusiastic about going to great lengths to make seasonal decorations that will amuse and impress people. He has animated Christmas lights out in front of his building, a 15 foot tall Christmas tree inside, and even an air blown Christmas decoration or two to really spice things up. His store is the closest thing that we have to a Christmas village in this city, so he can really benefit by going all out with the commercial Christmas decoration.

Then again, if you are running a bar or a coffee shop, you probably do not want to do too much commercial Christmas decorating. After all, people come to those businesses as a sort of escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. On those days when there are Christmas jingles playing from every store, it is nice to be able to get a drink or a cup of coffee in a place that is not too saturated with Christmas spirit.

Then again, I know folks who operate coffee shops with a very different philosophy. I know one where they actually move one or two tables into the back to make room for all of the commercial Christmas decoration they put up. It is really something to see when they get it all set up. It is not how I run my business, but the patrons at that place seem to like it well enough. And after all, isn't it about making the customers happy?

Some allocation base settled for product costing in ERP

Resource Class	Resource	Cost Component Class	Allocation Basis	Comments
Direct Labor	Labor	Direct Labor	Labor Hrs	-
Labor Overhead	Labor Overhead	Labor Overhead	Labor Hrs	-
Costing Resource	Granulation Costing Resource	Granulation Cost	Machine Hrs	The overheads related to Granulation will be captured based on the ‘Department’ segment in the COA
QAD	QAD	Quality Overhead	Machine Hrs	QAD cost can also be allocated on the basis of Quality hours.
Warehouse Overhead	Warehouse Overhead Resource	Warehouse Overhead	Machine Hrs	The allocation of Warehouse overhead to the product cost will be on the basis of the machine hours
GPO (General Plant Overhead)	GPO Resource	GPO	Machine Hrs	The allocation of Warehouse overhead to the product cost will be on the basis of the machine hours

How overheads will be calculated in ERP implemetation?

Computation of Overheads:

Direct and Indirect overheads are incurred to produce the finished goods from the Raw materials. At MIRACLE Pharma Ltd. we propose to use Resource based absorption.

1.       All the overheads will be modeled as resources and will be absorbed in the product cost on the basis of actual labor hours / machine hours consumed during the production batch. A separate Resource class will be created for each overhead to be consumed.

2.       These Resources will be mapped to every production activity in the routing attached to the recipe.

3.       Resource absorption rate will be computed on the basis of the actual overhead expenses incurred which will be captured in relevant Account balances in Oracle GL module.

4.       The account code combinations will be tagged with the relevant Resource Class. The account balances will be obtained from the Standard Trial Balance report or a custom report can be developed for it.  The account balance to be absorbed can be decided by the Cost Accountant based on the capacity utilization factor of the plant.

5.       The computation of capacity Utilization factor will not be captured in the system.

How material cost will be computed in Oracle ERP environment?

Computation of Material Cost:

1.       Standards for Raw material costs will have to be set up in the system based on the existing process being followed. Once the system is in use, Standard costs can be set on the basis of Actual Costs. Variance will be calculated based on these standard costs.

2.       Actual costs for ingredients (Raw materials) will be computed at period end based on the following transactions:

·         Purchase Orders and Supplier Invoices

·         Material issues from inventory

·         Material receipts in inventory

·         Material transfers/adjustments etc.

3.       Raw materials as well as finished goods will be valued based on Period Moving Average Cost (PMAC). It is the most accurate method of inventory valuation which takes into account previous month’s closing inventory value along with current month’s inventory transactions.

GAP: In OPM Costing, simple moving average cannot be used for inventory valuation. It can be done only at the period end after taking into account all the inventory transactions for the period.

Configurations with respect to OPM Costing:

1.       Inventory Organizations: All Inventory organizations will be modeled as Process enabled organizations.

2.       Cost Types: Cost Types indicate the costing method being used. Two cost methods Actual and Standard shall be configured. The Standard Cost type shall be used to calculate Standard Cost where as Actual Cost Type will be used for cost accounting and inventory valuation.

3.       Cost Component Groups: Cost component categorize the costs for analytical purposes. The cost component groups will include Material, Direct Labor, Resource and Overheads etc.

4.       Cost Component classes: The cost component classes act as buckets to aggregate the costs. Some of the cost component Classes include Raw Material, Active Material, Direct Labor, QAD Cost etc.

5.       Resource Cost:  Resource cost (the cost of using the resource per hour) will have to be provided for each plant resource. Overheads will also be configured as resources to absorb them on the basis of machine hours or labor hours.

Computation of Product Cost:

Product cost can be segregated into the following:

1.       Material Cost

2.       Overheads