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WHO IT’S FOR

Built for owners who do the work, too.

The US has 36,272,992 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 US.

36,272,992 businesses across 19 industries, in 2022. 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.

  • Retail trade 2,815,726
  • Wholesale trade 723,851
  • Manufacturing 637,062
  • Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting (farms not included) 286,347
  • Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction 94,728
  • Utilities 24,035

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 warehousing 4,092,247
  • Real estate and rental and leasing 3,511,924
  • Accommodation and food services 1,198,753
  • Management of companies and enterprises 25,413
  • Industries not classified 8,498

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.

  • Other services (except public administration) 3,861,919
  • Administrative and support and waste management services 3,195,754
  • Health care and social assistance 2,949,843
  • Finance and insurance 1,027,154
  • Educational services 963,245

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 10,856,493 businesses, 29.9% of the total.

AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM ARE SMALL

98 in every 100 businesses have fewer than 20 staff.

Four in five 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.

35,531,588 of all businesses in the US (98.1%) have fewer than 20 staff. Employer firms’ published size bands, with every business without employees in the first bar.

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.

36,272,992 businesses in the US
36.27m 31.69m 22.85m 10.86m Professional 4.89m Transport 4.09m Other services 3.86m Construction 3.66m Real estate 3.51m Admin & support 3.20m Health 2.95m Retail 2.82m Arts 1.83m Food & stay 1.20m Finance 1.03m Education 963k Wholesale 724k Manufacturing 637k 98.1% have fewer than 20 staff No employees 29,811,495 Under 5 staff 4,029,041 5 to 19 staff 1,691,052 20 to 499 staff 654,501 500 or more 21,041 Businesses in the US by number of employees, in 2022 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: US Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses and Nonemployer Statistics, 2022 (employer firms by sector and size from Statistics of U.S. Businesses, plus businesses without employees from Nonemployer Statistics), businesses in 2022.
  2. Which industries drop out at each step is our judgement, made at NAICS sector level. These are broad groups: some businesses we keep won’t fit, and some we drop would.
  3. Census counts a business with premises in several industries once in each, so the industries add to 65,862 more than the national count of 36,207,130.
  4. Farms (crop and animal production) aren’t in either Census source, so agriculture here is forestry, fishing and farm services only.
  5. 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.