The British Chambers of Commerce said the annual total equated to one-sixth of all crimes in the UK.
The business group called for more action to tackle offences against firms, including making the police record all business crime.
Industry leaders said there was a `worrying' lack of confidence in the police among businessmen and women.
A survey of 3,900 businesses for the BCC found that almost two out of three had been the victim of crime in the past year.
Chris Fletcher, policy director at Greater Manchester Chamber, said: "This shows that the police still have a lot of work to do to win back business confidence.
"It is understandable that some incidents are too minor to report to police, but this may suggest that some things, such as anti-social behaviour by teenagers or petty theft, are so common now that businesses just see it as an everyday occurrence.
"However, this should not be an excuse for not reporting crimes, as only with accurate data can the true scale of the problem be assessed."
Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "The government's preferred measure of reporting crime, the British Crime Survey, does not even count crime against business, so it is little wonder the problem is being ignored."
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Our business suffers regular losses due to vandalism and theft. Last week when we contacted GMP to report a break-in they didn't bother turning up but entered a report saying that they had investigated and took a report. When we contacted them to ask for a crime reference they refused as the "attending " officer was off duty and would contact us later. We have not had an attendance and the report has now been taken over the 'phone.Is this a new way of reducing reported crime? If GMP ignore business crime not only does it increase but it puts you out of business- a new way of massaging the crime figures -less businesses equals less crime against business.