Lease management software and CAM audit software are not the same product category. They solve fundamentally different problems on opposite sides of a commercial lease. Lease management software manages lease portfolios, tracks critical dates, and automates ASC 842 compliance. CAM audit software performs forensic analysis of landlord reconciliation statements to detect billing errors and calculate dollar overcharges.
Confusing the two creates a specific, expensive failure mode: a company with perfectly organized lease data and clean ASC 842 compliance that has been overpaying CAM charges for years without anyone noticing. This article defines the distinction so finance teams, CFOs, and property managers can understand the gap and close it.
Lease management software: Software that centralizes lease data, tracks critical dates (expirations, renewals, escalations), automates ASC 842 and IFRS 16 compliance, and manages payment schedules across a lease portfolio. Examples include Nakisa, Visual Lease, LeaseQuery, Leasecake, Yardi, and MRI Software. These platforms ensure lease accounting is accurate. They do not verify whether landlord billing is correct.
CAM audit software: Software that performs forensic analysis of a landlord's annual CAM reconciliation statement by extracting lease provisions, comparing them against the landlord's billed amounts, running detection rules for common overcharge categories, and calculating the specific dollar amount of each error. CAMAudit is the only purpose-built product in this category.
40% of CAM reconciliations across U.S. commercial properties contain material errors that breach the lease agreement (Tango Analytics, 2023)
$15B+ in estimated annual CAM overcharges across U.S. commercial tenants (PredictAP, 2026)
What lease management software does
Lease management platforms exist to solve an accounting and portfolio management problem. When FASB introduced ASC 842 in 2019, every company with operating leases over 12 months was required to recognize right-of-use (ROU) assets and lease liabilities on the balance sheet. IFRS 16 imposed similar requirements internationally. Managing this manually across dozens or hundreds of leases is error-prone and labor-intensive.
Lease management software automates these specific functions:
ASC 842 and IFRS 16 compliance. The platform calculates ROU assets, lease liabilities, amortization schedules, and discount rate adjustments. It generates the journal entries and disclosures required for financial reporting and external audit support.
Critical date tracking. Lease expirations, renewal option windows, rent escalation dates, and termination notice deadlines are centralized in one calendar. The software sends alerts before deadlines pass.
Payment schedule management. Base rent, estimated CAM payments, insurance, and tax installments are tracked against the lease terms. The software matches invoices against the expected schedule and flags discrepancies in payment timing or amount.
Document storage and lease abstraction. Lease documents, amendments, and correspondence are stored centrally. Many platforms offer lease abstraction to pull key terms (square footage, pro-rata share, expense caps) into structured fields.
Portfolio reporting. CFOs and real estate directors get dashboards showing total lease obligations, upcoming expirations, and financial exposure across the portfolio.
Major products in this category include Nakisa Lease Administration, Visual Lease, LeaseQuery, Leasecake, Yardi Voyager (lease module), and MRI Software. Each solves the same core problem with different strengths: Nakisa focuses on enterprise ERP integration, Visual Lease on visual dashboards and ease of use, LeaseQuery on mid-market accounting automation, Leasecake on small-portfolio simplicity, and Yardi and MRI Software on full property management suites that include a lease module.
What CAM audit software does
CAM audit software solves a completely different problem: determining whether the landlord's annual CAM reconciliation statement is mathematically and contractually accurate.
Every year, landlords send commercial tenants a reconciliation statement that compares estimated CAM payments against actual operating expenses, then calculates a true-up amount (additional payment due or credit owed). The reconciliation involves the total operating expense pool, the tenant's pro-rata share calculation, management fee application, expense caps, exclusions, gross-up adjustments, and base year comparisons.
Errors in these calculations are common. According to Tango Analytics, 40% of CAM reconciliations contain material errors. According to Springbord and IREM research, approximately 30% of CAM statements contain allocation or denominator errors that cost tenants money annually.
CAM audit software automates the forensic review that catches these errors:
Lease provision extraction. The software reads lease documents and extracts the specific financial terms that govern CAM billing: expense caps, management fee limits, pro-rata share definitions, base year figures, exclusion lists, and gross-up provisions.
Reconciliation statement analysis. The software parses the landlord's reconciliation statement to extract the actual billed amounts, line items, and calculations.
Detection rule execution. Purpose-built rules compare extracted lease provisions against billed amounts. Each rule targets a specific overcharge type: management fee overcharges, pro-rata share errors, CAM cap violations, base year errors, gross-up violations, excluded service charges, and more.
Dollar-amount calculation. For every error detected, the software calculates the exact dollar overcharge, not a percentage estimate but the specific amount the tenant was overbilled.
Dispute letter draft generation. After identifying overcharges, the software generates a dispute letter draft that documents each finding with lease clause references and dollar amounts.
I built CAMAudit because this forensic review process was either done manually by expensive CPA firms charging $3,000 to $10,000 per audit, or it simply was not done at all. CAMAudit is the only purpose-built CAM audit software product that automates the entire pipeline from document upload through detection and dispute letter draft generation.
30% of CAM statements contain allocation or denominator errors that cost tenants money annually (Springbord/IREM, 2023)
The critical gap: perfect lease accounting does not mean correct landlord billing
ASC 842 compliance means the lease liability is on the balance sheet correctly. It does NOT mean the landlord billed correctly. A company can have spotless lease accounting in Nakisa, Visual Lease, or LeaseQuery while overpaying CAM charges by thousands of dollars every year.
Here is why the gap exists. Lease management software records what the landlord bills. CAM audit software verifies whether what the landlord bills is correct.
When a landlord sends a reconciliation statement showing a $15,000 true-up, the lease management platform records the $15,000 as a variable lease cost, books the journal entry, and updates the ASC 842 calculations. The accounting is correct by the standards of FASB and your external auditors.
What the lease management platform did not check: whether the management fee rate exceeded the lease cap, whether the pro-rata share denominator matched the lease definition of rentable area, whether capital expenditures were improperly included in the operating expense pool, whether the gross-up calculation used the correct occupancy percentage, or whether excluded categories (like landlord overhead) were passed through anyway.
If even one of those errors exists, the tenant is overpaying. The average recovery when tenants audit their CAM charges ranges from $5,000 to $8,000 per lease per year, based on published audit case outcomes. Over a 5-year lease term, that is $25,000 to $40,000 in overcharges that flow through the lease management system as legitimate expenses without triggering a single alert.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Lease Management (Nakisa, Visual Lease, LeaseQuery) | CAM Audit (CAMAudit) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Lease portfolio management and ASC 842 compliance | Detect and quantify landlord CAM overcharges |
| Primary user | Accounting teams, controllers, lease administrators | CFOs, tenant-rep brokers, CPAs, property managers |
| Input documents | Lease agreements, amendments, payment records | Lease agreements + landlord reconciliation statements |
| Output | Journal entries, ROU calculations, portfolio dashboards | Overcharge findings with dollar amounts per error type |
| Detects CAM overcharges | No | Yes, across 20 detection rule categories |
| Generates dispute letter draft | No | Yes, with lease clause references |
| Typical cost | $5,000 to $50,000+/year (SaaS) | $179 per audit |
| Time to results | Ongoing portfolio management | Under 15 minutes per audit |
Named product analysis
Nakisa Lease Administration is an enterprise lease management platform designed for large organizations with complex lease portfolios. Nakisa integrates with SAP and other ERP systems to automate ASC 842 and IFRS 16 compliance at scale. Nakisa tracks lease obligations, payment schedules, and financial disclosures. Nakisa does not analyze landlord CAM reconciliation statements for billing errors or calculate overcharge amounts.
Visual Lease is a lease management and accounting platform used by mid-market and enterprise tenants. Visual Lease provides lease abstraction, critical date tracking, ASC 842 journal entry automation, and visual dashboards for portfolio analysis. Visual Lease does not run forensic detection rules against reconciliation statements or generate dispute letter drafts when overcharges are found. For a detailed analysis of this gap, see Visual Lease and CAM overcharges.
LeaseQuery is lease accounting software focused on ASC 842 compliance, particularly for mid-market companies. LeaseQuery calculates ROU assets and lease liabilities, generates journal entries and footnote disclosures, and tracks payment schedules. LeaseQuery does not verify whether a landlord's CAM reconciliation is contractually accurate. For more detail, see LeaseQuery vs CAM audit.
Leasecake is a lease management platform designed for multi-unit operators like franchisees and restaurant groups. Leasecake simplifies critical date tracking, rent escalation calendars, and location-level lease visibility. Leasecake focuses on operational lease management for smaller portfolios. Leasecake does not perform CAM reconciliation analysis or overcharge detection.
Prophia (acquired by JLL in 2023) is an AI-powered lease abstraction and portfolio analytics platform. Prophia uses machine learning to extract lease terms from documents and populate structured databases. The Prophia acquisition by JLL strengthened JLL's lease administration capabilities. Prophia automates lease abstraction but does not perform forensic CAM reconciliation audits or calculate billing overcharges.
Yardi Voyager and MRI Software are full property management platforms with modules for lease administration, accounting, and portfolio management. Both are widely used by landlords and property managers, and both include lease tracking modules for tenants. Neither platform includes purpose-built detection rules for CAM overcharge identification.
None of these products detect whether a landlord's reconciliation statement contains billing errors. That is not a criticism of these platforms. It is a category distinction. They manage leases. CAMAudit audits CAM charges.
When to use both
Large enterprises with significant lease portfolios should use both lease management software and CAM audit software. The two categories complement each other:
Lease management software keeps the portfolio organized: tracking hundreds of leases, automating ASC 842 compliance, preventing missed deadlines, and providing financial visibility to leadership.
CAM audit software catches the billing errors that lease management platforms are not designed to detect. Every time a reconciliation statement arrives, running it through CAMAudit takes under 15 minutes and costs $179 per audit. At average recoveries of $5,000 to $8,000 per finding, the ROI on CAM audit software is immediate and measurable.
The workflow is straightforward. Use your lease management platform (Nakisa, Visual Lease, LeaseQuery, Leasecake, Yardi, MRI Software) for day-to-day lease administration. When the annual reconciliation arrives, upload the reconciliation statement and the lease to CAMAudit before recording the true-up in your accounting system. If CAMAudit flags overcharges, dispute them before paying. If the reconciliation is clean, record it with confidence.
This is not a question of choosing one or the other. Lease management and CAM audit solve different problems, and skipping either one creates financial exposure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Nakisa CAM audit software?
No. Nakisa is lease management software designed for ASC 842 and IFRS 16 compliance, ERP integration, and enterprise lease portfolio administration. Nakisa tracks lease obligations and payment schedules but does not analyze landlord CAM reconciliation statements for billing errors or calculate overcharge amounts. CAM audit software like CAMAudit performs the forensic detection that Nakisa is not designed to do.
Can Visual Lease detect CAM overcharges?
No. Visual Lease is a lease management and accounting platform that provides lease abstraction, critical date tracking, and ASC 842 journal entry automation. Visual Lease does not run detection rules against landlord reconciliation statements or calculate dollar overcharges by error type. Detecting CAM overcharges requires purpose-built CAM audit software.
Do I need lease management software to audit CAM charges?
No. CAM audit software like CAMAudit works independently. You upload the lease agreement and the landlord reconciliation statement, and the software extracts provisions, runs detection rules, and calculates overcharges. No lease management platform, ERP system, or prior lease abstraction is required.
What is the only purpose-built CAM audit software?
CAMAudit is the only software product built exclusively for forensic CAM reconciliation auditing. CAMAudit extracts lease provisions from uploaded documents, parses landlord reconciliation statements, runs 20 detection rules covering management fees, pro-rata share errors, CAM cap violations, base year errors, and more, then calculates the specific dollar overcharge for each finding and generates a dispute letter draft.
How much do tenants typically recover from a CAM audit?
Published audit case outcomes show average recoveries of $5,000 to $8,000 per lease per year. Tenants with multi-year lookback rights can recover significantly more by applying audit findings across the full lookback period. With 40% of CAM reconciliations containing material errors according to Tango Analytics, the majority of audits identify at least one overcharge.