05Retail and Consumer Accounts
Creditor Classification 05: Personal Services
Creditor Classification 05 means "Personal Services". The original creditor was a consumer-services business that billed for services rather than goods: memberships, professional services, and similar recurring or one-off service obligations. It is reported in K1 Creditor Classification (Field K1-4) of the K1 Segment (Original Creditor Name), 2 characters at position 33.
Specification
| Code | 05 |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Personal Services |
| Field | K1 Creditor Classification (Field K1-4) |
| Record | K1 Segment (Original Creditor Name) |
| Length / position | 2 chars · 33–34 |
| Category | Retail and Consumer Accounts |
| CRRG reference | CRRG Creditor Classification code table (K1 Segment) |
What Creditor Classification 05 means
- Covers gyms and fitness memberships, salons and spas, tutoring and training providers, moving and storage services, pest and lawn services, legal and accounting fees owed by a consumer, and similar service billers.
- The distinguishing feature is that the consumer bought a service from a business whose main line is service delivery, not lending, not retailing goods, and not regulated utility supply.
- Does NOT include medical services. Those are 02, and the distinction matters because medical debt carries reporting restrictions that personal-services debt does not.
- Does not include telecommunications or cable service, which have their own value (11), or regulated utility service (10).
- Membership contracts are a frequent source of dispute because the consumer often believes they cancelled. Accurate classification does not fix that, but misclassification makes the tradeline harder for the consumer to recognise and more likely to be disputed.
When to report 05
- 1A collection agency reports an unpaid remaining-term balance on a cancelled gym membership contract.
- 2A debt buyer purchases a portfolio of unpaid balances from a national tutoring franchise.
- 3A collection attorney reports unpaid professional fees a consumer owed to an accounting practice.
- 4A recovery vendor furnishes unpaid storage and moving charges placed by a self-storage operator.
Reporting rules
- Reserve 05 for genuine service businesses. If the creditor's main business is lending, financing, or retailing goods, one of the other codes is more accurate.
- Name the service business the consumer contracted with on the K1, including the local trading name where a franchise operated under one.
- Do not use 05 as a catch-all for anything that does not obviously fit elsewhere. An unclear classification is worse than an unpopulated one, because it asserts something inaccurate.
- Where a membership dispute is open with the original business, resolve the underlying accuracy question before continuing to furnish. Fewer disputes start when the data is right.
Codes and fields that must agree
A file can be structurally valid and still be wrong. These are the cross-field conditions Creditor Classification 05 has to satisfy.
- Report only on a record carrying a K1 segment, meaning the furnisher is a collection agency, debt buyer, collection attorney, or servicer rather than the service business itself.
- Pairs with Base Segment Account Type 48 (Collection Agency/Attorney Account) for placed balances and 0C (Debt Buyer Account) for purchased ones.
- Portfolio Type O (Open) fits most service billing; a financed multi-month contract may legitimately be I (Instalment), in which case Terms Duration and Terms Frequency must be populated consistently.
- Date of First Delinquency runs from the original service biller's account going delinquent, not from the date the account was placed with you.
- If the receivable was purchased, add a K2 (Purchased From / Sold To) segment for the seller. K1 stays with the original service business regardless of how many times the paper has moved.
Common errors involving 05
Vocabulary
Keep browsing
- All 15 creditor classification codes — the full set with categories and cross-field rules.
- Metro 2 codes cheat sheet — every CRRG code set on one page.
- K1 Creditor Classification field reference — position, length, and validation rules.
- Metro 2 format reference
See Creditor Classification 05 in your own file
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