Your ledger lives on the office machine for a reason. From home, the correct move is to go to the data — on screen, through the tunnel — not to drag the data across the internet to you.
For most small offices this is the real reason remote access exists: the accountant needs Tally (or similar accounting software) from home. This page is a pointer with a warning. Tally-class software keeps its company data in files that expect a fast, stable local network. A VPN makes the office reachable from home — it does not make a home internet link into an office LAN cable. Choose the pattern below that respects that difference and your books stay safe.
Connect the VPN, then open Remote Desktop to your own office PC and work in Tally exactly as if you were sitting there. The program and its data both stay on office machines on the office LAN; only pictures of the screen cross the internet. A dropped connection mid-entry costs you a reconnect, not a corrupted company. Speed feels like the office because the heavy work happens in the office. This is the pattern used by most offices that run accounts from home daily, and it is the one this series recommends without hesitation.
It is technically possible to point a home installation of the software at the office data folder through the tunnel. Be honest about what can go wrong: accounting databases write many small records constantly, and a Wi-Fi dip or a VPN hiccup in the middle of a write can leave the company data damaged — sometimes silently, discovered at month-end. Multi-user work makes it worse, with home and office users writing together over a link the software never expected. If you must test this pattern, do it on a copy of the data, never the live company, and treat any error message as a full stop.
In both patterns, do not 'solve' remote work by copying the company data to the home PC. A copied ledger is uncontrolled the moment it leaves: it goes stale, it forks from the real books, it sits on a machine the office cannot protect, and in many setups it breaks the software's licensing terms as well. The office copy is the only copy. Home is a window, never a second filing cabinet.
If several people must work in the accounts from different places every day, and the office internet is weak, be honest: remote-desktop-into-one-PC has a ceiling. That is the point where the software's own cloud or hosted edition (most accounting vendors, including Tally's ecosystem, offer one through partners) becomes the grown-up answer. It costs money monthly, and it removes the whole class of problems on this page. VPN remote access is the right tool for occasional and single-user home work; daily multi-user accounting is a product decision, not a network trick.
See the video for the live demonstration of reaching the office system from home.
▶️ Watch Full VideoAlmost certainly not. Accounting software makes constant small reads and writes that a local network answers instantly and an internet link answers slowly, one round trip at a time. The software was designed for LAN speed. Switch to Remote Desktop to the office PC and the same VPN will suddenly feel fast, because the data work happens locally in the office.
A normal Windows desktop allows one interactive session at a time — the second person either waits, takes over, or needs their own office PC. Offices with two regular home workers usually give each their own desk PC to connect to, or move to a proper server setup.
Working through Remote Desktop changes nothing about the books themselves: the data, the licence and the audit trail all stay on the office system, and entries are made by named users as usual. That is precisely why auditors and CAs generally accept this pattern, while copied data on home machines makes them nervous.