The seat nobody is in
Xero is set up and running. Who is finishing it?
Xero is built for two parties. Its reconciliation screen offers, alongside matching and creating, the option to leave a note starting a discussion with your accountant or bookkeeper. Its advisor user role — full access, manual journals, all reports, and the only role that can set a lock date — exists to be handed to somebody.
So the useful question is not whether Xero is good software. It is who is sitting in the second seat. With nobody in it, a Xero organisation does not break; it drifts. Statement lines accumulate, rules keep firing, notes go unread, and no period is ever locked. Outsourced bookkeeping is, in practice, the purchase of that missing side.
A two-sided product. One side is frequently empty.
Xero’s Reconcile tab puts bank statement lines imported from the bank on the left and transactions created in Xero on the right, and the aim is to match each line to a transaction or create one during reconciliation. For each statement line, Xero documents four possible moves.
- Match it to a transaction that already exists — an invoice, a bill.
- Accept a transaction Xero suggests, based on a bank rule or on something reconciled previously.
- Create a new account transaction, such as a spend, receive or transfer.
- Start a discussion with your accountant or bookkeeper, by adding a note for them to read, where you are not sure how the line should be reconciled.
That fourth option is not a support feature. It is the product acknowledging, in the ordinary flow, that some lines are not the business’s to decide alone. The same assumption runs through the permission model: Xero’s advisor user role gives full access to an organisation including advanced settings, manual journals and every report — and Xero describes it as the role a business owner assigns to their accountant or bookkeeper.
Some of what that role carries is unremarkable. Some of it decides whether a set of accounts can ever be finished:
- Setting and changing lock dates — the act that stops a past period being edited.
- Entering manual journals, including the accruals and adjustments that make a month mean anything.
- Bulk editing through find and recode.
- Running and publishing reports, including the reconciliation reports and the management report.
- Fixed asset settings, depreciation and disposals.
- The assurance dashboard, which exists to monitor the accuracy and integrity of the data.
How an unowned Xero file comes apart.
Nothing breaks, and that is the difficulty. A Xero organisation with nobody responsible for it degrades in stages, each of which looks survivable on the day.
- Week two. The reconcile count on the dashboard stops returning to zero. It is still a small number, so it stays a small problem.
- Month two. Lines that were genuinely unclear get coded to something reasonable, because coding them keeps the count moving and leaving them does not.
- Month three. A rule written months ago for speed keeps matching a supplier that has since changed what it invoices for. The rule is working perfectly and the coding is wrong.
- Month four. Notes left on statement lines for the accountant sit unanswered — the accountant being the person who left.
- Quarter end. No lock date is set, so every past period remains editable, and figures somebody already relied on quietly move.
- Year end. Somebody new is asked to produce accounts from a file that has never been agreed against a bank statement, and the first invoice of the relationship is for archaeology.
None of this is visible from the homepage. The bank account widget counts the statement lines waiting to be reconciled; nothing counts the ones that were reconciled to the wrong thing on the way past.
Reconciled means recorded. It does not mean right.
Xero defines bank reconciliation as the process of confirming that all the transactions in your bank accounts are recorded in your business accounting records. Read that literally, because it is exactly right and it is narrower than most owners hear. It is a statement about coverage — everything that moved is in there. It makes no claim about what each item was recorded as.
| A reconciled line establishes | It leaves untested |
|---|---|
| Money of that amount moved on that date | Whether the coding describes what the money was actually for |
| A transaction exists in Xero against it | Whether it sits against the right contact, account or period |
| Cash in the ledger agrees with cash at the bank | Whether a transfer between your own accounts has been counted as income and cost |
| Nothing is left waiting on the Reconcile tab | Whether anything was pushed off the tab by a plausible guess |
This is why “we are fully reconciled” and “the accounts are correct” are answers to different questions, and why a tidy Reconcile tab is a poor proxy for a sound set of books. The check that tests correctness is somebody reading what the coding says the business did, and knowing the business well enough to notice when it is wrong.
Inherited a Xero file? Check these six first.
A bookkeeper leaving is the commonest way a business discovers it never knew the state of its own ledger. None of the following needs an accountant. It needs an hour and somebody willing to write down what they find.
- Who holds the advisor user role today. Anyone in that list no longer connected to the business should lose access now, not at year end.
- When each bank account was last agreed to a real statement — not last cleared on screen. Xero’s reconciliation reports answer this, and an advisor-level user can run them.
- Whether a lock date exists, and what it is. No lock date means every past period is still editable by anyone with access.
- How many bank rules exist and in what order. Xero applies them in the order they appear, most restrictive first, so a broad rule sitting near the top quietly absorbs lines a specific rule was written to catch.
- Whether any statement lines carry unanswered discussion notes. Those are open questions about your own money that somebody asked and nobody answered.
- Whose name the subscription is in. Where a practice was billing for it, settle billing and control explicitly rather than assuming they follow each other.
Do this before appointing a replacement. Handing a file to somebody new without knowing its condition converts a bookkeeping problem into an open-ended one.
Three ways to fill it. Each fails differently.
The advisor seat can be filled from inside the business, by a local practice, or by an outsourced service. Each genuinely works in the right circumstances, and each fails in a way worth knowing about in advance.
| Who sits in it | Works where | Fails where |
|---|---|---|
| Somebody inside the business, given the role | There is genuinely a person with the training, the time and the temperament — plus a deputy for the weeks they are away | The role lands on whoever seems least busy, and the work becomes an evening job that competes with everything else |
| A local practice or a solo bookkeeper | Volumes are moderate, the relationship is long, and sitting down with the person matters to you | Capacity is one calendar. Holidays, illness and a growing client list all land on the same desk, usually at year end |
| An outsourced service | The cycle has to run to a date regardless of anyone’s week, and you want a named owner and a documented handover | Someone genuinely needs to be physically present, or the work is honestly a few hours a quarter |
Where At Par fits — and the limits.
At Par takes the second seat in the Xero you already keep. Your organisation stays your system of record: nothing migrates, nothing is exported into a private platform. At Par reviews the file, reconciles the exceptions, posts the adjustments a month needs, and closes the period — with a qualified accountant (ACCA) accountable. The detail sits on the service page: Xero review and monthly close.
Where the file has been drifting for a while, the first work is catch-up, priced as its own job, before ongoing review and close takes over on a cycle. Receivables and invoice follow-up sits alongside, as does management reporting. What any provider should own — not only this one — is set out in the scope standard.
Running QuickBooks rather than Xero: QuickBooks and done-for-you bookkeeping. Weighing a subscription against a service in the general case: software or a managed service. Data protection and access controls have their own page.
Asked by businesses holding a Xero file and no bookkeeper.
Do I need a bookkeeper if I use Xero? +
Xero is designed on the assumption that somebody holds its advisor user role — the level that enters manual journals, publishes reports and sets lock dates. That person does not have to be external. It does have to be someone, and it has to be someone with the time and the training to make the judgement calls the software deliberately leaves open. A business without anybody in that role can still process transactions; what it cannot reliably do is finish a period.
What is the advisor user role in Xero? +
It is the highest ordinary access level in a Xero organisation: full access including advanced settings, manual journals and all reports. Xero describes it as the role a business owner or administrator gives to their accountant or bookkeeper. It carries the ability to set and change lock dates, bulk edit through find and recode, run and publish reconciliation and management reports, manage fixed assets, and use the assurance dashboard. Two further permissions — bank account admin and managing users — are not granted to advisors by default.
Who can set a lock date in Xero? +
Only a user holding the advisor role. Once a lock date is set, users cannot add or edit transactions dated on or before it, although drafts can still be created and submitted for approval. Lock dates can be applied to all user roles, or to all roles except advisors, and an advisor can remove one at any time. Practically, a business whose only advisor-level user has left may be unable to lock a period until somebody else holds the role.
Our bookkeeper set up Xero and then left. What should we do first? +
Establish the file’s condition before appointing anyone. Check who still holds the advisor role and remove departed users. Find the date each bank account was last agreed against an actual statement, using the reconciliation reports. Check whether a lock date exists. Read the bank rules and their order. Look for statement lines carrying unanswered discussion notes. Confirm whose name the subscription is in. An hour spent on that turns an unknown into a scope.
Does Xero reconcile the bank account automatically? +
Xero proposes; the reconciliation is confirmed by a person. Statement lines arrive through a bank feed, and for each one Xero can suggest a transaction based on a bank rule or on something reconciled before. The line is then matched, accepted, created, or left with a note asking an accountant how to treat it. Bank rules pre-fill the answer and speed the process considerably, but the underlying model is a proposal that somebody confirms.
If our Xero is fully reconciled, are the accounts correct? +
Not necessarily, and the distinction matters. Xero defines reconciliation as confirming that all transactions in the bank accounts are recorded in the accounting records — a statement about completeness of recording, not about the accuracy of each classification. A file with an empty Reconcile tab can still show a transfer between two of its own accounts as income and cost, a payment coded to the wrong expense, or a receipt applied to the wrong invoice. Coverage and correctness are separate tests.
What are bank rules in Xero, and can they cause problems? +
A bank rule tells Xero what to do with statement lines meeting conditions you set, and can be created while reconciling, while cash coding, or from the bank rules screen. Xero applies rules in the order they appear on that screen, so ordering is not cosmetic: a broad rule placed above a specific one will absorb lines the specific one was written to catch. The usual failure is age — a rule that encoded a correct decision keeps applying it after the arrangement behind it changed.
Can an outsourced service work inside our existing Xero organisation? +
That is the normal arrangement. The provider is invited as a user and given the advisor role; the organisation, its history and its data remain the company’s. Two details deserve to be agreed on day one rather than discovered on the way out: that the subscription sits in the company’s name, and that the company keeps the ability to manage users, so access can be withdrawn without asking anybody’s permission. Departure should cost a revoked login, nothing more.
Can we run Xero ourselves after our bookkeeper leaves? +
Many businesses do, and for straightforward trading it is a reasonable choice. It requires naming somebody internally, giving them the advisor role, and accepting that the role includes judgement work — accruals, unclear statement lines, the decision to lock a period — rather than only data entry. The arrangement fails quietly when nobody is named, because Xero will carry on accepting transactions indefinitely without anyone deciding a month is finished.
Show us the Xero. We’ll tell you what state it’s in.
Advisor access to one organisation for one month is enough. Back comes the condition report: last genuine reconciliation per account, lock-date position, rules worth killing, open notes nobody answered, and what closing the next month would take.
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Reviewed by an ACCA on the At Par team · Last updated 29 July 2026 · Xero behaviour described here was checked against Xero Central’s current help articles on 29 July 2026; Xero is a trade mark of Xero Limited and is not affiliated with At Par. See what we actually do.