Q: I’ve gotten in the habit of paying off every purchase I make with my credit card right away. Will making multiple payments each month help boost my credit score?

A: This is a bit of a tricky question. Making multiple payments each month can certainly help ensure that you don’t wind up with a bill you can’t pay off in full at the end of the month, which can help prevent you from falling into debt.

But the actual act of making multiple payments more often than not isn’t going to net any more points than simply paying the bill off in full by your due date. According to Tom Quinn, credit expert with Credit.com, issuers only report account information to the major credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – once a month.

This information simply includes whether you’re up to date on payments and how much of a balance you may be carrying on the card. Issuers won’t specify how many times you paid the bill that month or the date it was actually paid. (They also won’t report things like statement credits.)

However, making multiple monthly payments “could have an impact if the incremental payment was captured in the lender's system just before they are making their monthly update on the consumer's account to the credit bureau,” Quinn says.

Want to know what can and can't affect your credit score? Email your questions to editors@mainstreet.com.

—Jeanine Skowronski is staff reporter for MainStreet. You can reach her by email at Skowronski.jeanine@thestreet.com, or follow her on Twitter at @JeanineSko.