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What Does "DLA" Mean on a Credit Report?

Dena Standley | October 19, 2022

Dena Standley
Legal Expert, Paralegal
Dena Standley, BA

Dena Standley is a seasoned paralegal with more than 20 years of experience in legal research and writing, having received a certification as a Legal Assistant/Paralegal from Southern Technical College.

Edited by Hannah Locklear

Hannah Locklear
Editor at SoloSuit
Hannah Locklear, BA

Hannah Locklear is SoloSuit’s Marketing and Impact Manager. With an educational background in Linguistics, Spanish, and International Development from Brigham Young University, Hannah has also worked as a legal support specialist for several years.

Summary: "DLA" on a credit report means "date of last activity." Here is SoloSuit's guide on DLA and how it will affect your credit report.

The date of the last activity, also known as DLA, is often discussed in the field of credit repair in ways that are inaccurate or misleading. As a result, many consumers do not understand the fundamental importance of DLA in terms of their credit reports and credit ratings.

Here's everything you need to know about DLA on your credit report.

What is a DLA?

Date of Last Activity on your credit report refers to the last time there was activity on any of your accounts. DLA is used on any account in the last seven years, whether it is an on-time payment or a late payment. Accounts with no activity are supposed to drop off your credit report after seven years. Simply calling a creditor does not count as an activity.

Consumers generally have questions about the DLA in their credit reports. It's essential to understand what a DLA means on a credit report, how collectors use it, and how it can hurt consumers.

A credit report is updated when one of three things happens on any active account:

  • A consumer makes a payment.
  • A consumer misses a payment.
  • The balance of the account increases.

The Fair and Accurate Credit Reporting Act of 2003 states that creditors must wait 180 days from the first delinquency before posting negative activity to their credit report. This provides a grace period to consumers.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act added provisions that enhance the accuracy of consumer credit records. It gives consumers a right to one free credit report per year from the credit reporting agencies. Consumers may also purchase a credit score for a reasonable fee, along with information about how the credit score is computed.

The date of the last activity, also known as DLA, is often discussed in the field of credit repair in inaccurate or misleading ways. As a result, many consumers do not understand DLA's fundamental importance in their credit reports and ratings.

This is the financial information included on your credit report

Your credit report may contain:

  • Non-sufficient funds payments, or bad checks.
  • Checking and savings accounts closed for cause due to money owing or fraud committed bankruptcy.
  • Court decisions against you that relate to credit.

Registered items, such as an auto loan, allow the lender to repossess if you don't pay—commentaries, such as consumer statements, fraud alerts, and authenticator alerts.

A credit report contains information about your credit cards and mortgages, including:

  • When you signed up for your account.
  • What you owe.
  • Whether or not your claim was transferred to a collection agency.
  • If you exceed the credit limit.
  • Personal information that is available in publicly available documents, such as bankruptcy.

Your credit report can also include checking and savings accounts closed for the cause. These include accounts closed due to money owing or fraud committed by the account holder.

Which items do not appear on your Credit Report?

Your credit report does not include your marital status, medical information, buying habits or transactional data, income, bank account balances, criminal records, or your level of education. Additionally, it does not include your credit score.

When does the Date of the Last Activity (DLA) change?

The Date of the Last Activity listed on your credit report is essential to understand. This data is updated when one of three things happens on any active account:

  1. Your balance increases.
  2. The Date of Last Activity included the "drop off" date.
  3. The item's date was removed from the report, but this is no longer the case.

How can collectors use a DLA to impact consumers negatively?

Collectors can regularly change customer accounts, increasing the balance to be. Making payments on a past due account will not change the date of the first delinquency and can not reset the clock. Collection accounts are deleted seven years from the date of the first delinquency of the original account.

Collection accounts are always associated with the original account, so they must be erased simultaneously. The further the past delinquency occurred, the less impact it can have on a credit score.

Keeping informed of updates and changes in the credit repair landscape is critical. By staying up-to-date on DLA and other information, you can achieve your credit goals. Use credit repair business software to help you stay on top of essential changes in your credit report. You can learn more about credit repair on SoloSuit's website.

What is SoloSuit?

SoloSuit makes it easy to fight debt collectors.

You can use SoloSuit to respond to a debt lawsuit, to send letters to collectors, and even to settle a debt.

SoloSuit's Answer service is a step-by-step web-app that asks you all the necessary questions to complete your Answer. Upon completion, we'll have an attorney review your document and we'll file it for you.

Respond with SoloSuit

"First time getting sued by a debt collector and I was searching all over YouTube and ran across SoloSuit, so I decided to buy their services with their attorney reviewed documentation which cost extra but it was well worth it! SoloSuit sent the documentation to the parties and to the court which saved me time from having to go to court and in a few weeks the case got dismissed!" – James

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