Lease audit vs. CAM audit: what's the difference?

A lease audit covers every financial obligation in your commercial lease. A CAM audit focuses on one specific category: common area maintenance charges, operating expense pass-throughs, and the billing methodology behind them. The distinction matters because most commercial tenants who receive an annual reconciliation statement need a CAM audit, not a full lease audit.

Choosing the wrong scope can mean paying for a broad engagement that covers questions you do not have, while missing the specific calculation errors in the reconciliation you do have.

Definitions

Lease audit: A comprehensive review of all financial terms in a commercial lease: base rent, rent escalation calculations, percentage rent, CAM charges, property tax pass-throughs, insurance, option exercise calculations, and any other financial obligation. Typically conducted at lease renewal, post-acquisition, or when a specific financial dispute arises that may involve multiple lease provisions.

CAM audit: A focused review of the common area maintenance reconciliation. It checks whether the expenses billed match what the lease permits, whether the calculations (management fee caps, pro-rata share denominator, gross-up methodology, CAM caps, base year) are correct, and whether excluded expense categories have been kept out of the pool. The scope is the annual reconciliation statement plus the operating expense provisions of the lease.

Most tenants need the CAM audit. The full lease audit is right for a smaller subset of situations.