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Sometimes financial records become out-of-date.
This is especially true when we're deailing with parties that either haven't yet received notice of a transaction or have recorded it correctly.
For this reason accountants have to adjust financial records to reconcile them. In other words, they must update various records to reflect what their accounts should look like. Either due to the error or timing, these differences must be exposed.
The most common example of this involves a bank and a firm.
Each month and firm's accountant will try to reconcile the financial statement of the bank's records for his company, and his own company.
Reconciliation is critical, both to give the accountant a better idea of his actual position and to highlight possible transactions that should not have taken place.
When done properly, the bank's books and the firm's books should be equal after reconciliation has been completed.