With cloud accounting, you can access your accounts and key financial figures at anytime and from anywhere. When you use a desktop-based solution, you are tied to the office: your software, your data and your accounts are all sitting on a local drive. This means that it limits the access you can have to your financial information. Cloud-based accounting helps you get rid of this restriction. Your data and records are all safely encrypted and stored on a cloud server, and there is no software application for you to download, which means that you can always check on the status of your business from anywhere, as long as you have a web browser.