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WHO IT’S FOR

Built for owners who do the work, too.

The UK has 5,690,260 businesses. Beeswax is made for a particular slice of them. Scroll down to see which slice, and whether yours is one of them.

START WITH EVERYONE

Every business in the UK.

5,690,260 private sector businesses across 16 industries, at the start of 2025. Each circle is an industry, sized by how many businesses it has.

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.

  • Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles 548,515
  • Manufacturing 263,085
  • Agriculture, forestry and fishing 147,460
  • Mining, energy and water supply (sections B, D and E, published together) 28,395

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.

  • Transportation and storage 328,960
  • Accommodation and food service activities 233,080
  • Real estate activities 154,770

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.

  • Administrative and support service activities 474,780
  • Human health and social work activities 397,995
  • Other service activities 376,080
  • Education 312,735
  • Financial and insurance activities 89,235

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 2,335,170 businesses, 41.0% of the total.

AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM ARE SMALL

98 in every 100 businesses have fewer than 20 staff.

Three in four 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.

5,565,910 of all businesses in the UK (97.8%) have fewer than 20 staff. These are the UK’s published size bands, across 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.

5,690,260 businesses in the UK
5.69m 4.70m 3.99m 2.34m Construction 885k Professional 819k Retail & wholesale 549k Admin & support 475k Health 398k Other services 376k Info & comms 353k Transport 329k Education 313k Arts 277k Manufacturing 263k Food & stay 233k Real estate 155k Agriculture 147k 97.8% have fewer than 20 staff No employees 4,272,535 1 to 9 staff 1,150,875 10 to 19 staff 142,500 20 to 249 staff 116,020 250 or more 8,335 Businesses in the UK by number of employees, at the start of 2025 The owner works in it does the work, not just runs it Sells projects or time quotes, jobs, hours Wants one app work and books together Beeswax

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.

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

  1. Business counts: Department for Business and Trade, Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2025 (detailed tables 1 and 5), businesses at the start of 2025.
  2. Which industries drop out at each step is our judgement, made at SIC 2007 section level. These are broad groups: some businesses we keep won’t fit, and some we drop would.
  3. The Department for Business and Trade rounds every count to the nearest 5, so the industries add to 5 fewer than its published total of 5,690,265.
  4. 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.