The Sage Small Business Tracker Q3 2025

In collaboration with Smart Data Foundry and The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), the latest iteration of the Sage Small Business Tracker has been launched.

The Tracker analyses anonymised Sage Accounting and Payroll data of over 140,000 UK Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs) and looks at how they are performing in real terms in the current economic climate. The anonymised data set includes SMBs from all regions across the UK, including Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
The latest Sage Small Business Tracker shows SMBs reported growth between July and September. Despite higher employment costs and uncertainty surrounding fiscal measures like the Autumn Budget, small businesses still saw profits rise, supported by rising revenues that outpaced expenditure. However, capital expenditure continued to fall, signalling low investment appetite.

Key data points for Q3 2025:

• Profits and revenues: Small businesses showed broad-based resilience, with profits up 5.7% year-on-year and real revenues rising 2.5% annually, showing steady performance across sectors.
• Real expenditure: Expenditure rose 0.8% year-on-year. Growth remained slower than revenues, helping profits to rise. However, persistent wage pressures and weak confidence continue to constrain firms’ capacity to undertake new capital investment.
• Cash: Cash holdings continued to grow in Q3, accelerating to 5.4% year-on-year from 0.5% last quarter, suggesting businesses are also building precautionary savings in response to a difficult economic environment. Download the report for the full analysis.

Download the report for the full analysis.