Pizza delivery brand Dominoes, announced at the start of summer that it was creating 10,000 jobs in the UK, ahead of a huge #SummerofSport, including #Euros2016, #Wimbledon and #Olympics2016. The firm predicted 160 pizzas to be ordered during every minute of the #Euros2016, a great opportunity for such a massive business and familiar brand.

But not every business looks forward to a Summer of Sport. Productivity is often reported to drop during major sporting tournaments, and at its most extreme, is linked to a downturn in the economy. To counter this, many bigger businesses offer employees flexible working conditions, early starts and finishes, shift patterns…but where this is possible for larger businesses, the threat of slow-down has a much more significant impact on the vitally important start-ups and small business.

In the early stages of setting up a business, traditionally work life balance goes out the window. Entrepreneurs have to focus 110% on making their business a success. The necessary commitment to early starts, late finishes and often no holiday is often a contributing factor to why many individuals are scared of taking the leap and starting that dream business.

The truth of it is: if you have a customer-driven deadline, whatever your business is, you need to do what it takes to complete the job. An early finish to watch England blaze out of Euros2016 against Iceland would be even more painful if it hits your bottom line. But if admin and organisation that keeps you ‘in the office’, then you need to work smarter.

In today’s mobile app-based world, technology and changing working practices open up new opportunities. For example, cloud-based applications are becoming more and more popular in today’s workplaces. They allow you to complete most back-end business processes regardless of location on your mobile device. You can check out our opinion on some of the best ones out there by downloading our top 8 apps for business factsheet.

So if last month you were chained to the computer completing your bank reconciliations instead of watching Murray win matchpoint, next month you could be doing it from your mobile while watching the Olympics 2016 opening ceremony.

Reckon One, our latest solution to launch in the UK is an affordable, cloud-based accounting package aimed at start ups. It is ideal for those who need to record and track all kinds of financial information, from raising a customer invoice to submitting a tax return. It is ideal for the small business or start up owner as it allows you to complete these tasks from a range of devices and location – giving you more freedom in how you manage that complex work life balance. We offer a 30-day free trial and in the era of the app store, we offer it on a month-by-month subscription, which can be turned off and on at any time. So if you need a little flexibility this summer, while keeping your business moving, sign up to start completing those administrative and financial tasks wherever and whenever it’s most convenient for you.

For those busy, small businesses further along the growth chart, document management, in its broadest sense, can be arduous and time-consuming. According to research recently published by DataPro and Gartner, paper reduces office productivity. They state approximately 8 hours are wasted per week in paper management such as simply finding documents, difficulty sharing documents, distribution & storage, archiving and retrieval. Overall, the average employee spends 400 hours per year searching for paper documents. A document management solution, such as Virtual Cabinet, can act as a mechanism for secure document storage, searching, sharing, distribution and workflow between businesses and their clients saving hours of time.

There’s a second benefit to increasing productivity with the right technology: when business processes become more streamlined, employers can offer their staff greater flexibility and working practices can change in even the smallest of businesses. This in turn can increase motivation, countering the drop in productivity that has come to be expected during a Summer of Sport.