Enterprise lease audit platforms cost six figures. Here's what small businesses with 1–10 commercial leases actually need — and what each option costs.
Think your lease might have this issue? Run a free CAM audit to check.
Find My OverchargesCheck your own documents before you keep researching.
Find overcharges in your CAM reconciliation. Most audits complete in under 15 minutes.
Find My OverchargesSee a sample report firstThere's a gap in the market that no one talks about.
Enterprise lease management platforms — Tango, Nakisa, LeaseQuery, CoStar Real Estate Manager — are built for Fortune 500 companies managing 500+ locations under ASC 842 compliance. They cost six figures per year. They require implementation teams. They have sales processes measured in quarters.
Small businesses with 1–5 commercial leases don't need portfolio valuation software. They need to know one thing: is my landlord overcharging me on CAM?
40% of CAM reconciliations contain material errors (Tango Analytics/PredictAP, 2023)
That's a different problem, and the enterprise tools don't solve it. This article covers every realistic option for small businesses — what each does, what it costs, and who it's actually built for.
Before reviewing options, it's worth being specific about the problem.
A CAM reconciliation arrives once a year. It lists every expense your landlord is claiming against your lease. Some of those expenses may be legitimate. Others may be excluded by your lease language, capped at a lower amount, miscalculated due to a wrong pro-rata share, or simply inflated.
Catching those errors requires:
Enterprise software does none of this. It tracks your lease obligations, produces financial disclosures, and helps with portfolio analytics. That's a different job.
Small businesses need forensic detection — the ability to find overcharges in a specific reconciliation against a specific lease. Here's what's available.
| Option | Cost | Time | Forensic Detection | Dispute Letter | Built For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAMAudit | $79/audit | <15 min | 14 rules, automated | Yes, included | SMB tenants |
| LeaseLens | ~$50–200/mo | Hours | None | No | Abstraction teams |
| Tango | $100K+/yr | Weeks | None | No | Fortune 500 |
| DIY spreadsheet | $0 | 10–20 hrs | Manual only | DIY | Lease-literate operators |
| CPA firm | $150–300/hr | 4–8 weeks | Partial | Yes | Complex disputes |
| Traditional auditor | $2K–5K upfront + 33–40% | 2–4 months | Yes | Yes | Large recoveries |
What it does. Upload your lease and CAM reconciliation statement. CAMAudit extracts the relevant figures — management fee percentages, base year amounts, pro-rata share, cap provisions, line-item categories — and runs 14 detection rules against them. In under 15 minutes, you get a report showing every rule that fired, the specific dollar impact, and why it's a potential overcharge under your lease terms. A dispute letter draft is included, grounded in the actual findings with state-specific legal language.
What it costs. $79 for a single audit. $179 for 3 audits. $249 for 5 audits. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Who it's built for. Tenants with 1–10 commercial leases who want to know whether they're being overcharged and want documentation to dispute it. No ongoing subscription required. Pay per audit.
Verdict for small business. The right tool for the job. The price is low enough that it's worth running even if you're uncertain whether an overcharge exists — the audit either confirms your concern or rules it out in minutes.
What it does. LeaseLens is a lease abstraction platform. You upload a lease and it extracts structured data — rent schedules, option periods, critical dates, CAM provisions, insurance requirements. It's good at turning dense lease language into readable summaries.
What it costs. Subscription-based, typically $50–200/month depending on volume.
Who it's built for. Lease administrators and property managers who need to track portfolio obligations, set critical date reminders, and maintain structured lease records.
Verdict for small business. Useful if you're tracking multiple lease obligations and need clean abstracts. Not useful for CAM auditing. LeaseLens will tell you what your lease says about CAM. It won't tell you whether your landlord followed it. Those are different functions, and LeaseLens only does one of them.
What it does. Tango is a lease accounting and portfolio management platform built for enterprise real estate teams. It handles ASC 842/IFRS 16 compliance, portfolio-level analytics, location intelligence, and lease administration at scale. Nakisa and LeaseQuery are similar.
What it costs. Enterprise contracts, typically $100,000+ per year. Implementation takes months and usually requires professional services.
Who it's built for. Fortune 500 companies with real estate teams, finance departments managing lease accounting under public reporting standards, and portfolio managers tracking hundreds of locations.
Verdict for small business. Not relevant. Tango is not a forensic audit tool. It is designed to track what your lease obligations are, not whether your landlord honored them. Even if you could afford the contract, it wouldn't solve the problem a small business has. See also: CAMAudit vs. traditional CAM auditors for more on the enterprise gap.
What it does. You pull out your lease, read the CAM exhibit, build a spreadsheet, and check each line item manually. You verify the pro-rata share formula, check cap calculations, flag excluded items, and tally the difference.
What it costs. $0 in fees. 10–20 hours minimum of your time.
Who it's built for. Operators who are comfortable reading commercial leases, have the time available, and are confident they understand what's covered and excluded under their specific lease terms.
Verdict for small business. Viable in limited circumstances. If you're a lease attorney, a commercial real estate administrator by training, or you've done this before, DIY is legitimate. If you're a restaurant owner reviewing your first CAM reconciliation, the risk of missing something is high. Pro-rata share calculations, gross-up provisions, and CAM cap base year definitions have specific mechanics that are easy to misread. A $79 audit costs less than one hour of most professionals' time and eliminates the error risk. See our detailed breakdown of DIY vs. professional audit.
What it does. A CPA with real estate expertise can review your lease and reconciliation, identify overcharges, and prepare a professional dispute letter. The quality of work depends heavily on the individual's lease audit experience.
What it costs. $150–$300/hour. A thorough CAM audit typically takes 8–20 hours of CPA time, so expect $1,200–$6,000 per engagement.
Who it's built for. Tenants with complex disputes — multiple audit years, contested methodology, leases with unusual provisions, or situations where a professional's credentialed signature on the dispute matters.
Verdict for small business. Good option when you already have a dispute and need professional documentation for negotiation or legal proceedings. Expensive for a routine audit where you don't yet know whether an overcharge exists. The right sequence: run a flat-fee audit first to determine whether there's a meaningful overcharge, then engage a CPA if the findings warrant it.
What it does. A contingency firm reviews your lease and reconciliation at no upfront cost. They take 33–40% of whatever they recover.
What it costs. No upfront fee. 33–40% of recovery. On a $10,000 overcharge, you net $6,000–$6,700. On a $50,000 overcharge, the firm takes $16,500–$20,000.
Who it's built for. Tenants with very large recoveries ($50,000+), multi-year audit disputes, or complex multi-location portfolios where the firm's negotiation resources justify the percentage.
Verdict for small business. Expensive at any recovery amount. The break-even point where a contingency auditor produces the same net recovery as a $79 flat-fee audit is around $200 in overcharges. Everything above that, flat-fee wins on money returned to you. For small businesses with 1–5 locations and typical overcharge patterns, contingency is the wrong model.
Use CAMAudit. Run it every year when the reconciliation arrives. At $79/audit, it's the cheapest way to confirm you're not being overcharged. If it flags something, you have a report with the specific amounts and a dispute letter draft.
Use CAMAudit's 3-pack or 5-pack. $179 for 3 audits ($60/audit) or $249 for 5 audits ($50/audit). Same detection, lower per-audit cost. Review your audit rights clause in each lease before uploading — some leases limit audit frequency or require advance notice to the landlord.
Start with CAMAudit across all locations to triage. Identify which locations show meaningful overcharges. For locations with $50,000+ in flagged overcharges, consider engaging a CPA to prepare a negotiation-quality dispute package. For the rest, use the CAMAudit dispute letter as your starting point and negotiate directly.
Engage a CPA or contingency firm. At this point you need professional negotiation support, not more detection software. CAMAudit's value is in finding the overcharge. Professional auditors' value is in recovering it when the landlord pushes back hard.
"I built CAMAudit because I couldn't find a tool that did one thing: tell a small business tenant whether their CAM reconciliation was accurate. Everything in the market was either enterprise software built for lease accountants or a service that took a third of your money. The gap was obvious." — Angel Campa, Founder of CAMAudit
Do I need software if my lease is simple?
Simple leases are actually where automated auditing adds the most value. If your lease has standard CAM provisions, the overcharges that show up most often are arithmetic — wrong pro-rata share, management fee applied to excluded costs, caps calculated against the wrong base year. These are exactly what automated detection catches. "Simple lease" doesn't mean "no overcharge risk."
Can I use a lease abstraction tool like LeaseLens and then audit manually?
Yes, that workflow makes sense. Abstracting your lease first gives you structured data on your CAM provisions. But abstraction doesn't tell you whether the reconciliation matches those provisions. You still need a forensic review step — either manual or automated.
Is CAMAudit a subscription or pay-per-use?
Pay-per-use. Single audit ($79), 3-pack ($179), or 5-pack ($249). No ongoing subscription. You pay when you have a reconciliation to review. The CAM overcharge estimator is free — use it to estimate your exposure before buying an audit.
What if my landlord disputes the findings?
CAMAudit's dispute letter draft references specific lease clauses and audit findings. That's your starting document. If the landlord contests specific items, you escalate with your lease language. If the dispute reaches an impasse, a CPA or attorney can step in with the CAMAudit report as the foundation — you're not starting from scratch.
For a detailed breakdown of how CAM reconciliation errors happen and what to look for, see our guide on common CAM reconciliation mistakes.
