• Cashflow and profitability the top concerns keeping small business owners awake at night
• Worries about inflation, the cost of doing business, staff turnover and red tape begin to ease
• Small business owners making timely tweaks to meet challenges like seeking better supplier terms, increasing marketing and investing in training, talent and customer communications

More small business owners have identified cashflow and profitability as the biggest worries keeping them awake at night, but they are making timely tweaks to their operations to tackle growing challenges.

Other concerns about inflation, the cost of doing business, staff turnover, labour shortages, and red tape have begun to ease from the high levels 12 months ago.

The latest SME Business Insights report for Q1 2025 from NAB Economics released today highlights the biggest challenges amongst more than 600 small business owners:

• Cashflow was the top concern for small business owners (43%, up from 34% in Q1 2024).
• Profitability was also identified as more challenging (38%, up from 30%).
• Inflation and concerns about the cost of doing business have eased (30%, down from 33%).
• Concerns over staff turnover and labour shortages (29%, down from 35%), government policies and red tape (27%, down from 35%), and interest rates (10%, down from 16%) have eased.

For the first time as part of this survey series, small business owners were asked what they were doing to tackle these challenges:

• One in two (50%) small business owners are looking to cut costs where possible and seek better terms with their suppliers.
• Almost four in ten (37%) are planning to increase their marketing efforts.
• Around three in ten are reviewing their cashflow and working capital processes (29%), investing in new training, talent and people (28%), changing their pricing strategy (28%) and improving their customer communications and management (27%).

For more information, please see the full report What’s keeping SME’s awake at night & what are they doing to ease their worries?