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Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, so the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products. No new matter is being eliminated or introduced into the reaction, so you will end up with the same amount of matter that you started with.

mass cannot be either created or destroyed. thus, the sum of the mass of the reactants  must equal the sum of the mass of the products

The law of conservation of matter states that matter cannot be created, nor destroyed, only transformed.  In relation to the balancing of a chemical reaction, it means that all of the elements in the original chemicals have to be present in the resulting chemicals of the reaction.  They will simply be arranged differently.

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In chemistry matter means ions.

The total amount of matter must be equal (in both side of the equation).
Matter must be the same all throughout.

The law of conservation of mass is that matter can neither be created nor be destroyed. In a chemical reaction total mass of the reactants will be always equal to total mass of the products. The balancing of chemical reaction is based on this concept