Multi-unit franchisees receive reconciliation statements from different landlords in different formats. Here is how to compare them systematically.
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Find My OverchargesSee a sample report firstWhen you operate 10 or more franchise locations, reconciliation statements arrive from different landlords, generated by different property management platforms, formatted differently, and spread across a four-month window from January through April. The only way to compare them is to extract the same five numbers from every statement and normalize them into a single portfolio view. Here is how to do that.
Most multi-unit operators (MUOs) treat each reconciliation as an isolated event. The statement arrives, the controller or bookkeeper matches it to the lease, pays the balance due, and moves on. That approach works when you have two or three locations. At 10 or more, it hides the patterns that cost the most money.
Tango Analytics found that 40% of CAM reconciliations reviewed across U.S. retail centers contained material billing errors. When those errors repeat across a franchise portfolio with shared lease forms, the aggregate exposure reaches five and six figures quickly. For a detailed walkthrough of reading a single reconciliation, see how to read a CAM reconciliation statement.
Multi-location CAM reconciliation review: A tenant-side process for extracting standardized data points from CAM reconciliation statements across multiple franchise locations, normalizing the numbers into a single comparison format, and identifying billing errors that repeat across the portfolio.
A single-location tenant reads one reconciliation per year. A multi-unit franchisee reads 10, 20, or 50. The challenge is not that any individual statement is more complex. The challenge is that each one arrives in a different format, from a different landlord, calculated by a different property management system, and reviewed under a different deadline.
Four factors make multi-location reconciliation fundamentally different from single-site review.
When 15 reconciliation statements arrive over a 90-day window, the natural approach is to process them sequentially. Read, compare to lease, pay or dispute, move to the next one. The problem is that sequential processing makes it nearly impossible to notice that Location 4, Location 9, and Location 13 all have the same denominator issue. You finish each statement and forget the details before starting the next.
Landlords are required to deliver reconciliations within a lease-specified window after year-end, typically 90 to 120 days. That means statements trickle in from late January through April. Your first reconciliation might arrive eight weeks before your last one. By the time the final statement lands, the dispute window on the first one may be closing.
A Yardi-generated reconciliation puts your pro-rata share percentage in a different location than an MRI-generated one. AppFolio statements use different terminology. Some landlords send a two-page summary. Others send a 14-page backup package. The same number (your share of operating expenses) might be labeled "Tenant Share," "Pro-Rata Amount," "Your Portion," or "Allocated Expense" depending on the software and the property manager's preferences.
Even when your lease language is identical across locations (common with franchise templates), each landlord interprets it independently. One landlord may include the anchor tenant in the GLA denominator. Another may exclude them. One landlord caps the management fee at the lease percentage. Another calculates it on a gross basis that exceeds the cap. These interpretation differences are invisible unless you compare locations side by side.
Before you can compare reconciliations across your portfolio, you need to pull the same data points from every statement. These five numbers are the minimum extraction set. If you can get these from each reconciliation, you can build the portfolio comparison that reveals patterns.
This is the single most important number on the reconciliation. It determines what fraction of the total CAM pool you pay. Your lease defines it as your rentable square footage divided by the property's gross leasable area (GLA). The reconciliation should state the percentage explicitly.
What to look for: Does the stated percentage match what your lease calculates? If your lease says 2,200 SF out of 95,000 SF GLA, your pro-rata should be 2.316%. If the reconciliation shows 3.8%, the denominator has changed. That gap alone can represent $3,000 to $8,000 per year per location depending on the CAM pool size.
For more on how denominator errors work, see the CAM reconciliation process guide.
Most NNN leases allow the landlord to charge a management fee as a percentage of total operating expenses, typically capped at 3% to 5% in the lease. The reconciliation should show the management fee as a line item. Extract the dollar amount, then calculate the effective percentage yourself.
What to look for: Divide the management fee dollar amount by the total operating expenses (before the management fee). If the result exceeds your lease cap, the landlord is overcharging. This is one of the most common findings in franchise portfolios because landlords sometimes calculate the fee on a base that includes items the lease excludes.
This is the total amount the landlord spent on common area maintenance for the property during the reconciliation year. It includes landscaping, parking lot maintenance, snow removal, security, janitorial, insurance, property taxes (if included in your lease definition), and the management fee.
What to look for: Compare this year's total to last year's total. Increases above 5% to 8% warrant line-item review. BOMA benchmarks for retail centers show typical CAM cost increases of 2% to 4% annually. If the total jumped 15%, something changed, and you need to find out whether that change is a legitimate expense or a capital expenditure that should have been amortized.
This is the bottom-line number: what you owe (or what the landlord owes you). It is calculated as (total CAM pool x your pro-rata share) minus what you already paid in monthly estimates.
What to look for: A large balance due (more than 15% to 20% of your annual estimate payments) is a signal that either expenses spiked unexpectedly or your estimate was set too low. Either way, it requires line-item review before payment.
Calculate the percentage change from the prior year's reconciliation to the current one. Do this for both the total CAM pool and your share amount.
What to look for: If one location's CAM increased 3% and another location in a similar property type increased 18%, the outlier needs investigation. Year-over-year comparison is the fastest way to identify anomalies across a portfolio.
The three most common property management platforms in U.S. retail generate reconciliation statements with different layouts, terminology, and levels of detail. Knowing where each platform puts the key numbers saves hours of review time across a portfolio.
Yardi is the dominant platform in institutional retail. Its reconciliation statements typically include:
For a detailed Yardi-specific walkthrough, see how to read a Yardi CAM reconciliation.
MRI reconciliation formats vary more than Yardi because property managers configure their own report templates. Common patterns:
AppFolio is common in smaller retail portfolios managed by regional property management companies. Its reconciliation output is generally simpler:
Regardless of platform, the five numbers are present somewhere in every reconciliation. The format changes; the math does not.
"I built CAMAudit because multi-unit operators kept telling me they had no way to compare 15 different reconciliation formats without hiring a lease administrator. The five-number extraction approach turns that into a 20-minute-per-statement process instead of an all-day project." — Angel Campa, Founder of CAMAudit
Once you have extracted the five numbers from every reconciliation, organize them into a single table. This is the tool that makes multi-location patterns visible. Without it, each reconciliation lives in isolation and the portfolio-level view never forms.
Here is the format:
| Location | Landlord | Pro-Rata % | Mgmt Fee % | CAM/SF | YoY Change | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit 3, Mesa AZ | Retail West LLC | 2.3% | 4.8% | $6.12 | +4.1% | |
| Unit 7, Tempe AZ | Retail West LLC | 2.4% | 7.2% | $8.40 | +16.3% | Mgmt fee over cap, YoY spike |
| Unit 12, Chandler AZ | Desert Prop Mgmt | 3.9% | 5.0% | $7.85 | +5.2% | Pro-rata check needed |
| Unit 15, Gilbert AZ | Retail West LLC | 2.2% | 7.1% | $8.15 | +14.8% | Mgmt fee over cap, YoY spike |
| Unit 18, Scottsdale AZ | Canyon Holdings | 2.1% | 4.5% | $5.90 | +2.8% | |
| Unit 22, Glendale AZ | Retail West LLC | 2.5% | 6.9% | $8.55 | +15.1% | Mgmt fee over cap, YoY spike |
| Unit 28, Peoria AZ | Desert Prop Mgmt | 4.1% | 5.0% | $8.10 | +6.0% | Pro-rata check needed |
Sort by landlord first. Units 3, 7, 15, and 22 are all managed by Retail West LLC. Three of those four have management fees above 5%, which likely exceeds the lease cap. That is a pattern, not a coincidence.
Sort by CAM/SF second. The IREM and BOMA benchmark range for grocery-anchored strip centers is roughly $4 to $8 per square foot. Units above that range warrant deeper review. Units at $8.40 and $8.55 per square foot may have legitimate reasons (higher insurance costs, major common area repairs), but they need verification.
Flag anything with YoY change above 8%. A 15% year-over-year increase at three locations managed by the same landlord is a clear signal. Either that landlord had a genuine expense spike across all properties (possible but unlikely to be identical), or the reconciliation methodology changed.
Check pro-rata outliers. Units 12 and 28 both show pro-rata shares near 4%, while similar-sized units at other properties show 2.1% to 2.5%. If the unit square footage is comparable, the denominator at those two properties may be wrong.
For a 10-location portfolio, building this table takes roughly three hours if you are extracting from paper or PDF statements. For a 20-location portfolio, budget a full day. The investment pays for itself the moment you identify the first repeating pattern.
If you want to automate the extraction, run a free scan through CAMAudit and use the output to populate your comparison. The tool extracts the five key numbers automatically from uploaded reconciliation documents.
Once the portfolio comparison table is built, certain patterns become obvious. These are the most common red flags that repeat across multi-unit franchise portfolios.
Franchise operators frequently sign landlord-form leases. The landlord's attorney drafts the lease template. The franchisee's attorney reviews it, negotiates rent and a few business terms, but accepts the CAM provisions as written. When the same landlord manages multiple properties where you have locations, the same CAM calculation methodology applies at each site.
This means a management fee overcharge at one location managed by Retail West LLC is very likely to appear at every other Retail West LLC location. The landlord is not targeting you specifically. They are applying their standard reconciliation process, which happens to contain the same error everywhere.
According to ICSC research on retail lease structures, management fee provisions and operating expense definitions vary significantly across landlord-form templates. When one template contains a permissive management fee clause (allowing the fee to be calculated on gross expenses rather than net), every tenant on that template pays the inflated fee.
When a property loses a tenant, the vacant space may or may not remain in the GLA denominator. Some leases require gross-up provisions that adjust the denominator as if the property were 95% occupied. Others are silent on vacancy adjustments, which gives the landlord discretion to reduce the denominator and increase every remaining tenant's pro-rata share.
In a franchise portfolio, you can spot this by comparing pro-rata percentages year over year. If your pro-rata share increased from 2.3% to 2.8% without any change in your unit's square footage, the denominator changed. If that same shift happened at multiple locations managed by the same landlord, the landlord likely applied a vacancy-driven denominator reduction across all properties.
For more on how gross-up provisions work, see the franchise tenant CAM overcharges guide.
When insurance costs increase, they increase across an entire landlord's portfolio because the landlord typically carries a blanket insurance policy covering all properties. If your CAM reconciliation shows a 25% insurance increase at one location, check the other locations managed by the same landlord. If they all show the same spike, the landlord passed through a legitimate cost increase. If only some locations show the spike, the allocation methodology may be inconsistent.
Property tax reassessments work similarly. A landlord who successfully appeals a tax assessment at one property should reduce the tax pass-through at that location. If the tax line item does not decrease after a successful appeal, the landlord may be pocketing the savings. BOMA estimates that property tax accounts for 25% to 40% of total operating expenses in retail properties, making tax pass-through accuracy a material issue.
Your lease defines which expenses are included in CAM and which are excluded. Common exclusions in franchise NNN leases include capital expenditures above a specified threshold, leasing commissions, landlord's income taxes, and costs related to other tenants' spaces. When an excluded expense appears in the CAM pool at one location, check every other location with the same landlord or lease form.
This is where the portfolio approach creates leverage. Identifying an excluded service charge at one location provides the documentation template to check every other location for the same charge.
Finding the pattern is step one. Turning it into recovered occupancy costs requires a specific sequence.
Pick the location with the largest dollar exposure. Build the full case at that site: extract the lease clause, calculate the correct amount, determine the overcharge, and document the discrepancy. This location becomes your proof of concept.
Once you have the documented finding at one location, apply the same check to every other location with the same landlord, the same property management company, or the same lease template. In a franchise portfolio, this step often multiplies the finding by a factor of three to eight.
For example, if the management fee overcharge at your worst location is $2,400 per year, and you have six other locations with the same landlord using the same reconciliation methodology, the portfolio exposure is likely $14,400 to $16,800 per year. Over a four-year lookback period allowed in most leases, that becomes $57,600 to $67,200.
When you dispute CAM charges at multiple locations managed by the same landlord, send one consolidated dispute letter draft that covers all affected locations. This signals to the landlord that you have done a systematic review and that the issue is portfolio-wide, not a one-off complaint about a single statement.
A consolidated dispute is harder for a property manager to dismiss or delay. It also creates a single paper trail rather than fragmented correspondence across multiple properties.
Most leases specify a dispute window, commonly 30 to 90 days after receipt of the reconciliation. Because statements arrive at different times, your dispute deadlines are staggered. Build a deadline tracker alongside your portfolio comparison table:
| Location | Statement Received | Dispute Deadline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit 7, Tempe AZ | Feb 12 | Apr 13 | Dispute sent |
| Unit 15, Gilbert AZ | Feb 28 | Apr 29 | Under review |
| Unit 22, Glendale AZ | Mar 15 | May 14 | Pending extraction |
| Unit 12, Chandler AZ | Mar 22 | May 21 | Pending extraction |
Missing a deadline forfeits your right to dispute, regardless of the overcharge amount. In a multi-location portfolio, deadline tracking is not optional. It is the difference between recovering $60,000 and recovering nothing.
Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs) contain Item 6 (other fees) and Item 7 (estimated initial investment) data that includes expected occupancy cost ranges. Compare your actual CAM charges against the FDD benchmarks for your brand. If your occupancy costs exceed the FDD estimates by a material amount, that discrepancy is worth investigating. It may not indicate a landlord error (FDD estimates are often conservative), but it provides a useful baseline for identifying outliers in the portfolio.
How long does it take to review CAM reconciliations across 10+ franchise locations?
Manual extraction takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes per statement. For a 15-location portfolio, budget six to eight hours for extraction and another two to three hours to build the comparison table and identify patterns. Software-assisted extraction reduces this to roughly one to two hours total.
What is the most common CAM error that repeats across franchise locations?
Management fee overcharges and pro-rata denominator errors are the two most frequent findings in multi-unit franchise audits. Both repeat because the landlord applies the same reconciliation methodology at every property they manage.
Should I dispute each location separately or send one consolidated letter?
Send one consolidated dispute letter draft covering all affected locations when they share the same landlord. A portfolio-level dispute signals systematic review and is harder for the property manager to dismiss than isolated single-site complaints.
Do Yardi, MRI, and AppFolio reconciliation statements contain the same information?
Yes. The five core numbers (pro-rata share percentage, management fee, total CAM pool, your share amount, and year-over-year change) appear in all three platforms. The terminology and layout differ, but the underlying data points are consistent.
What happens if I miss the dispute deadline on one location while reviewing others?
Most leases treat the dispute window as a hard deadline. If you miss it, you forfeit the right to challenge that year's reconciliation at that location. Track deadlines by location from the day each statement arrives to avoid losing recovery rights while you review the portfolio.
This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or accounting advice. Consult a qualified attorney or CPA before taking action on any CAM dispute. CAMAudit provides forensic analysis tools to help tenants identify potential billing errors, but all findings should be reviewed by a professional before formal dispute proceedings.
