In general, we have great difficulty getting financial data from privately held firms; I have seen this across several industries in my career. Making a credit decision is then based to a larger degree upon the following questions:
* What do their personal references report?
* What information is available on their credit report (commercial and personal)?
* What is the experience of the relevant credit industry group, if any?
* Did they sign a personal guaranty for all indebtedness?
* Do we have other security, e.g., lien rights, available?
We are just now beginning to use an Equifax automatic credit scoring module, but we've only been using it for a few days, so I don't know yet how good a predictor it will be for viability and likelihood of payment.