The product line
Every product runs on the same living ledger.
Cost pressure Q2 2026 - Vol. 01 - PDF, 21 pp.
Small Business Cost Pressure Report
What it costs to earn $100 of revenue, measured from aggregate Uplinq small-business accounting data.
The median report cost stack reached 77.47 cents per revenue dollar.
Basis Aggregate ledgers
Trend window Jul 2024-May 2026
Companies 1,544
Suppression k>=30
Aggregate-only benchmark - suppression rules applied 
01 - Key Findings Aggregate-only benchmark - suppression rules applied
Four things the ledgers said this quarter
Report costs reached 77.47 cents per revenue dollar
The median eligible company-month carried a 77.47-cent report cost stack for each revenue dollar, equivalent to $77.47 of report costs per $100 of revenue.
Operating expenses accounted for 53.36 cents per revenue dollar
Operating expenses alone reached a 53.36-cent median share, before owner draw and other report cost layers are added.
Sticky cost load reached 13.94% of revenue
Sticky cost-load categories created the largest median group share, with semi-sticky costs adding another 10.21%.
Three categories outpaced matched-panel revenue
Auto & Vehicle, Insurance, and Payroll & Benefits showed positive growth gaps versus matched-panel revenue.
02 - Inside The Report
21-page report, built to be quoted
Cover
Small Business Cost Pressure Report
The published cover and headline cost-stack readout.
P. 01
Executive readout
Cost pressure is a stack, not a line item
The included population and four headline benchmark metrics.
P. 03
Benchmark
Where $100 of revenue goes
Active-category medians showing the largest claims on each $100 of revenue.
P. 06
Methodology
Methodology and boundaries
Claim boundary, eligibility, amount policy, and public-cell suppression rules.
P. 17 03 - What You'll Learn
What you'll learn
a.
Where $100 of revenue goes, line by line
b.
Which costs are sticky, and which flex when revenue dips
c.
Which categories outpaced matched-panel revenue
d.
How report cost differs by revenue band and broad segment
e.
The questions to bring to your advisor this quarter
f.
How the benchmark is built, suppressed and bounded
04 - Methodology Snapshot
What this report can and can't claim
The report includes the full rule set. The short version:
Aggregate Uplinq SMB accounting data; no record-level customer data is shown on the public page.
Eligible company-months require at least $1,000 normalized net revenue.
The aggregate source snapshot runs from July 2024 through June 2026. The public Cost Pressure Index ends with the latest complete month used for the series, May 2026.
Medians, aggregate shares, and index readings over anonymized cohorts.
Public chart cells suppress below 30 companies and prefer at least 50 companies.
The report covers 24,082 eligible company-months, 1,544 companies, and 6,017,910 included journal lines.
Uplinq SMB accounting data, not the full SMB economy.
Winsorization sensitivity does not move the median operating expense ratio; it mainly changes the high tail and mean.
PDF, 21 pp. / Published Q2 2026
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06 - Using This Benchmark
Using this benchmark
Pull your own operating-cost share for the last 12 months and set it next to the benchmark. If you're above the median, start with the sticky lines - they only move with lead time.
Bring the category cut to the next quarterly conversation. The useful question is which lines outgrew revenue, and which were structural.
Benchmarks like this are only usable against books that are current. That's the product.
See how Uplinq keeps books current