If there’s one person small business owners depend on, it’s their accountant or bookkeeper. So owners demand a lot from them. They want flawless record-keeping, of course, but also absolute security and constant access to their information.

Once upon a time, that set of demands might have made an accountant break out in a cold sweat. Getting information from a financial professional to a client took communication and time. And sharing files online could risk security breaches.

Fortunately, the cloud has changed all that. Applications like Quickbooks and Peachtree can run in the cloud just as well as they do on a firm’s own office computers. In fact, using them that way keeps them better protected from outages or natural disasters than running them on a local machine.

With hosted software, business owners and accountants can look at the same document, at the same time, from anywhere in the world. And they can do it not just from a computer but from their smartphone or tablet device too.

One of the most significant benefits of using Peachtree or Quickbooks in the cloud is that accountants and bookkeepers don’t have to handle data issues themselves. The responsibility for backing data up and keeping it secure and available lies with IT consultants who are specialists in these matters. That means there’s no need for people whose training is in accounting to spend hours trying to set up a firewall or figure out the most secure way to share files remotely.

With hosted software, accountants can keep business owners connected to their accounts whether they’re at their office or fielding an urgent call from their iPhone at a conference in Cancun. And they can do it without breaking a sweat.