Small business statistics for Australia

Australia had 2,741,087 actively trading small businesses at 30 June 2026, which is 97% of all actively trading businesses, according to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman’s reading of Australian Bureau of Statistics data. Counting businesses of every size, the ABS recorded 2,814,778, of which 996,203 employed staff. In 2025-26, 460,461 businesses started and 375,331 stopped trading.

Where the figures come from

The ABS publishes Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, once a year from tax and business register data. The release covering July 2022 to June 2026 came out on 18 August 2026. The ABS totals here are the headline figures stated on that release. The small business count is taken from the Small Business Ombudsman’s data portal, which reads the same release and cites ABS table 13.

The ABS counts only actively trading businesses, so it is lower than the number of registered ABNs. It also revises earlier years as late tax data arrives: the June 2025 total was published as 2,729,648 in the 2025 release, and later figures for the same date can differ.

How many businesses, and how small

At 30 June 2026:

• 2,814,778 businesses were actively trading.
• 996,203 of them employed staff, which leaves about 1.82 million with no employees.
• 2,741,087 had fewer than 20 employees, the ABS and Ombudsman definition of small, which is 97% of the total and 84,618 more than a year earlier, a rise of 3.2%.

The picture is of a business population made mostly of owners working alone or with family. That is the reader most of this site is written for: the person who writes the quote, the invoice and the agreement themselves.

Entries and exits

In 2025-26 the ABS recorded 460,461 entries, an entry rate of 16.9%, and 375,331 exits, an exit rate of 13.8%. The net result was 85,130 more businesses, a rise of 3.1%. An exit means a business stopped actively trading, whether it closed, was sold or merged, so the exit rate is not a failure rate.

The ABS also publishes survival rates, the share of businesses still trading one to four years after they started. Those tables could not be read for this post, so no survival figure is quoted.

How fast small businesses get paid

The Payment Times Reporting Scheme requires large businesses and some government enterprises to report the payment terms they offer small business suppliers and how quickly they pay. The Regulator’s January 2024 update, covering data to June 2023 and the latest that could be read, found:

• an average payment term to small business of 35.4 days, and a median of 30 days;
• 67.2% of small business invoices paid within 30 days, up from 64.5% when the scheme began;
• manufacturing paying 51.1% within 30 days and financial and insurance services 82.5%.

The late payment statistics post sets these beside the UK’s figures, and the Australian invoice payment terms post covers what to put on an invoice.

What the numbers mean for a sole trader

1. You are the majority. About two in three actively trading businesses employ nobody, so tools and templates have to work for one person.
2. Turnover in the population is high. One in six businesses is new each year, so many customers are dealing with a supplier for the first time and need terms spelled out.
3. Large customers pay most invoices within a month, but a third take longer, so a deposit and a clear due date matter on larger jobs.

The ABN on an invoice page covers the identifier every invoice needs, the tax invoice page covers GST, the Australian tax invoice example shows one with GST free and taxable lines together, and documents every small business needs lists the rest.

Reading business statistics carefully

Business counts are easy to quote wrongly, so four cautions apply to the figures above. First, actively trading is not the same as registered. Millions of ABNs exist that do not trade, so a figure based on the ABN register will be far higher than the ABS count. Second, small has several definitions. The ABS and the Ombudsman use fewer than 20 employees; tax concessions use turnover; workplace laws use other thresholds. A statistic is only comparable with another that uses the same definition.

Third, the counts are revised. The ABS updates earlier years as late tax data arrives, so the June 2025 total published in 2025 and the June 2025 figure in the 2026 release can differ. Quote the release you read, with its date. Fourth, an exit is not a failure. A business that is sold, merged or closed by a retiring owner leaves the count the same way as one that ran out of money.

With those cautions, the picture is clear enough to plan around: a very large number of very small businesses, about one in six of them new each year, most with no staff, selling to customers who mostly pay within a month.

For a sole trader, the practical reading is simple: most of your peers work alone, and most of your large customers pay within a month.

In the product

The proposals module writes quotes and proposals in Australian dollars by default, with GST as the tax label for AUD, and turns an accepted quote into invoices: a deposit invoice due on acceptance and a draft balance invoice, or a single invoice due in 14 days. A pay link opens Stripe Checkout through the owner’s connected Stripe account on paid plans. The AI quote generator page shows the brief, and the guide to sending a proposal and getting paid follows the money.