How does your business stack up?
Enter a handful of numbers and see your profit margin, wage and rent ratios, and revenue per employee against indicative estimates for your industry — with practical insights on where to focus.
Takes ~2 minutes · Figures stay in your browser until you choose to share them
Profit Margin
Versus your sector
Wage & Rent Ratios
Cost discipline
Revenue / Employee
Operational efficiency
Key Insights
Where to focus
Benchmark figures are indicative industry estimates for general guidance only — not official ABS data. Individual results vary.
About this tool
Small Business Benchmark
Most small business owners have a nagging question they can never quite answer: are my numbers normal? You know your revenue, your wage bill, your rent and your profit — but without something to compare them to, it's hard to tell whether a tight margin is just the nature of your industry or a sign that something's leaking. The Small Business Benchmark tool gives you that reference point. You enter a handful of figures about your own business, pick your sector, and it shows you at a glance how your key operating ratios stack up against indicative estimates for businesses like yours — so you can see where you're strong, where you're lagging, and where a closer look might be worthwhile.
How it works
The tool works entirely from figures you supply — your annual revenue, headcount, total wage costs, rent or occupancy costs, and net profit — plus your industry and how long you've been trading. From those inputs it calculates four operating ratios: your profit margin (net profit as a share of revenue), your wage-to-revenue ratio, your rent-to-revenue ratio, and your revenue per employee. Each one is placed side by side with an indicative estimate for your chosen sector and marked as ahead of, around, or below that estimate, rolling up into a simple overall rating. It's important to be clear on what those comparison figures are: they're hand-built, order-of-magnitude reference points for general guidance, not official ABS Business Characteristics Survey data — the tool says so throughout. It also flags a rough indicative back-office cost and surfaces plain-language insights (for example, wage costs sitting well above the sector estimate might point to rostering, overstaffing or award-classification issues worth investigating). Your figures stay in your browser until you choose to share them.
Who it’s for
Australian small and medium business owners who want a fast, no-jargon sense of how their profitability and cost ratios compare to others in their sector, and where to focus attention.
- Turns five or six numbers you already know into four benchmarked operating ratios — profit margin, wage-to-revenue, rent-to-revenue, and revenue per employee — each shown as ahead of, around, or below the estimate for your sector.
- Comparison figures are clearly labelled as indicative industry estimates for general guidance, not official ABS data, so the tool is a conversation-starter rather than a precise valuation.
- Beyond the raw comparison, it highlights where costs or profitability diverge most from the sector norm — the kind of gaps that often trace back to fragmented providers or invisible back-office overhead.
Frequently asked questions
Are these benchmarks based on official ABS statistics?
No. The comparison figures are hand-built, order-of-magnitude reference points designed to give you context, and the tool labels them as indicative industry estimates for general guidance — explicitly not official ABS Business Characteristics Survey data. Treat the results as a directional gut-check that tells you roughly where you sit and what's worth a closer look, not as a certified statistic for your accountant or bank. For precise sector data you'd go to official ABS releases or industry-body reports; this tool is about giving you a quick sense of proportion.
What figures do I need to have ready before I start?
All figures are annual and you'll want them for a full financial year: your total revenue, number of employees, total wage costs, rent or occupancy costs, and net profit. You'll also select your industry from a list of common Australian sectors and how long you've been trading. That's it — you don't need to enter anything sensitive like customer data or bank details, and your numbers stay in your browser until you decide to share them to unlock the full written report.
My results say I'm below the estimate on a metric — what does that actually mean?
It means that ratio sits enough below the indicative sector figure to be worth understanding, not that you're doing something wrong. A profit margin under the estimate often points to costs you can't easily see — compliance gaps, work spread across too many disconnected providers, or processes that haven't been streamlined. A high wage-to-revenue ratio can reflect overstaffing, rostering inefficiency, or award-classification issues. The value is in the prompt to investigate: the tool shows you which lever is furthest from the norm so you know where digging is most likely to pay off.