START WITH EVERYONE
Every business in Australia.
2,814,778 actively trading businesses across 19 industries, 30 June 2026. Each circle is an industry, sized by how many businesses it has.
WHO IT’S FOR
Built for owners who do the work, too.
Australia has 2,814,778 businesses. Beeswax is made for a particular slice of them. Scroll down to see which slice, and whether yours is one of them.
TAKE AWAY
Businesses that grow, make or sell goods.
Farms, mines, factories, utilities, wholesalers and shops run on stock, production lines and tills. Their software needs to manage inventory, not projects.
- Agriculture, forestry and fishing 170,185
- Retail trade 156,143
- Manufacturing 90,879
- Wholesale trade 82,448
- Electricity, gas, water and waste services 9,168
- Mining 8,755
TAKE AWAY
Businesses that sell a room, a meal, a trip or a lease.
Cafés, hotels, freight and rideshare, property rentals and real estate. They sell by the night, the plate, the kilometre or the month.
- Rental, hiring and real estate services 319,717
- Transport, postal and warehousing 261,109
- Accommodation and food services 114,369
- Public administration and safety 7,908
- Currently unknown 1,695
TAKE AWAY
Businesses that sell appointments, policies or routine services.
Clinics, insurers and lenders, schools and tutors, cleaners and labour hire, hairdressers and repairers. Their work repeats rather than running as projects.
- Health care and social assistance 227,702
- Financial and insurance services 139,417
- Other services 138,735
- Administrative and support services 130,330
- Education and training 44,236
WHAT’S LEFT
Businesses that sell their work as quotes, projects and hours.
Architects, engineers, designers and studios, consultants, builders and trades, film and media. Each job is quoted, worked on, tracked and invoiced.
That’s 911,982 businesses, about a third of the total (32.4%).
AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM ARE SMALL
97 in every 100 businesses have fewer than 20 staff.
Nearly two thirds have no employees at all. The owner quotes the job, does the work, sends the invoice and chases the payment.
Software built for bigger firms assumes a finance team and a separate operations team. Most of these businesses have neither.
2,741,087 of all Australian businesses (97.4%) have fewer than 20 staff. The ABS doesn’t split size by industry in this release, so this chart covers every industry.
WHERE BEESWAX FITS
Beeswax is for the overlap.
The owner works in the business, not just on it. The work is sold as projects or time. And they want the quote, the job, the hours, the costs and the books in one place, not five apps.
No statistic counts these three together, so the count ends on one business: yours, if this sounds like you.
2,814,778
businesses in Australia
PERSPECTIVES
Beeswax from where you sit.
One business, four points of view: the owner, the person keeping the work moving, the bookkeeper and the accountant. Choose yours and watch a two-minute film about your part of the work.
Owner
Get your time back. Stay on top of the business.
Spend less of your day chasing updates and entering paperwork. See the work, costs and invoices together, so you can make decisions and get back to the work you enjoy.
Read more ↗Manager
Less chasing. More work moving.
Get the context you need without chasing it across people and tools. Keep tasks, deadlines, files and costs together, so you can coordinate delivery and give the business a clearer picture.
Read more ↗Bookkeeper
Less rekeying. More time to get it right.
Start with prepared expenses and their source documents instead of a pile of receipts. Spend less time repeating entries and more time resolving exceptions, checking allocations and keeping the books in order.
Read more ↗Accountant
Less piecing it together. More time to advise.
Get closer to the records behind the numbers. Spend less time reconstructing what happened and more time reviewing the treatment, investigating differences and helping your client make decisions.
Read more ↗Beeswax film
Click the picture to pause · C for captions · Esc to close
A DECISION TO MAKE TOGETHER
Different perspectives.
The same project.
A useful trial includes the people doing the work and the people checking the numbers. Start with a representative project, review the resulting records together and agree how the team will use it.
Follow the workflow ↗Source and method
- Business counts: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits (data cube 8165DC01, tables 1 and 13), businesses operating at 30 June 2026.
- Which industries drop out at each step is our judgement, made at ANZSIC division level. Divisions are broad: some businesses we keep won’t fit, and some we drop would.
- Industry circles are sized by count. The dashed rings trace each step’s total and are close to scale, not exact, because circles leave gaps when packed.