Reconciliation is the centre of how Xero works, more so than in most packages, and understanding that makes the whole thing click. Transactions arrive from your bank feed and Xero proposes a match — against an invoice you raised, a bill you entered, or a rule you have set — and you confirm or correct it. The daily job becomes clearing that queue rather than entering data. Bank rules automate the repeat offenders, so a recurring fuel payment or subscription arrives pre-coded. The discipline it enforces is real: because everything routes through reconciliation, an unreconciled account is visibly unreconciled rather than quietly wrong. The failure mode is a feed that stops — open banking connections expire and need re-authorising, and a stale feed looks exactly like a quiet month.