What Tenant Auditors Look For: A Landlord's Defensive Playbook
The audit isn't coming. It's already running. When your year-end reconciliation reaches a tenant's desk, firms like Baker Tilly and Springbord have automated tools that flag discrepancies before a human reviews a single line. A billing error above 3-5% of recoverable costs isn't just a refund. In most leases, it triggers the landlord's obligation to pay the tenant's audit costs outright. That changes the math on what "close enough" really means.
Why Tenant Auditors Are Coming For You
Key numbers
- 40% of CAM reconciliations contain material billing errors (Tango Analytics)
- 15-20% of total CAM billed is recovered on average by tenant audit firms (Springbord)
- 4 hrs/lease for manual abstraction: the root of systemic error at scale (Springbord)
The error rate exists for a specific reason. Springbord documents it plainly: manual lease abstraction takes four hours per document. A 30-building portfolio with 200 leases means 800 hours of manual work per reconciliation cycle. The mistakes aren't malicious. They're arithmetic.
Springbord's analysis of CAM reconciliation errors found that the majority of findings trace to internal process failures: inconsistent expense classification, undocumented gross-up methodology, and missing base year records. Most of these are preventable before the reconciliation goes out.
Leasecake has documented when audits get triggered: lease renewals, property ownership transfers, year-end NNN reconciliation letters, and corporate acquisitions. Those aren't random. They're the moments when a tenant's legal team reviews lease language in detail for the first time in years.
ASC 842 raised the stakes further. Commercial tenants now recognize operating leases on their balance sheets as Right-of-Use (ROU) assets. An inflated CAM bill doesn't just hit the income statement. It distorts the ROU asset calculation, affecting financial ratios that matter to investors and lenders. That gives CFOs a second reason to care about reconciliation accuracy.
The 7 Things They Check First
Auditors don't start randomly. Every firm runs a targeted sweep against the line items where property management accounting systems fail most predictably.
CapEx/OpEx misclassification
The highest-yield finding. Full roof replacement, chiller swap, or asphalt overlay billed as operating expense instead of capital. Auditors apply IRS Publication 946 and GAAP depreciation, then verify amortization schedules.
| System | Allowable Operating Expense | Capital Expenditure |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing | Patching leaks, annual inspection | Full tear-off and membrane replacement |
| HVAC | Filter changes, seasonal service | Full chiller or rooftop unit replacement |
| Paving | Pothole fill, restriping | Complete asphalt overlay |
| Interior | Painting between tenants | Full lobby renovation |
Gross-up applied to fixed costs
Gross-up should apply only to variable costs: janitorial, trash, utilities. Property insurance, real estate taxes, and exterior landscaping are fixed and do not change with occupancy. BDO and Springbord flag this as the single most common reconciliation error. In a building at 50% occupancy with $100K in variable costs, correct gross-up to 95% yields a 10% tenant share of $9,500. Any number higher on fixed items is an immediate audit objection.
Management fee base inflation
Landlords calculate percentage fees on a base that improperly includes CapEx, taxes, or insurance — items commonly excluded by well-negotiated leases. BDO also documents double-billing: a percentage management fee charged for overhead while the same staff's direct payroll and benefits run separately in the CAM pool.
Ownership expenses bleeding into CAM
Baker Tilly calls this "unallowed ownership expenses." The CAM pool reimburses property operations, not entity overhead. Auditors screen for executive salaries, leasing commissions, tenant improvement allowances, entity legal fees, and regional managers without direct daily property responsibility. Property management systems rarely force a clean ledger separation.
Pro-rata denominator manipulation
Most leases define the denominator as Gross Leasable Area (GLA): total building SF, static. If a landlord uses Leased Area instead, a major tenant vacancy shrinks the denominator and spikes every remaining tenant's share. Springbord tracks mid-year rent roll changes to catch pro-rata adjustments that were never applied.
Base year baseline errors
Tenants pay only for increases above the base year. A low base year means a larger delta every year after. Auditors reconstruct the base year ledger to find two patterns: partial-vacancy years where the landlord didn't gross-up base year variable expenses, and methodology shifts where in-house maintenance switched to outside vendors after the base year, making normal operations look like a cost spike.
Utility double-billing and sub-meter markups
High-consumption tenants (data centers, restaurants, 24-hour retailers) drive disproportionate utility costs that land in the general pool when not billed directly. After-hours HVAC revenue must be credited back to the utility pool, or the landlord collects twice. Sub-meter rate markups are often prohibited by lease language and state PUC regulations.
How to Audit Yourself Before They Do
You don't need an audit firm. Run the same screens they run before the reconciliation goes out.
Run the CapEx screen
Pull every invoice over $5,000. Apply the IRS/GAAP test: does this expense extend useful life or increase asset value? If yes, it's capital. Verify an amortization schedule exists with a defensible useful life. A 3-year amortization on a roof replacement will be challenged immediately.
Validate your gross-up arithmetic
Separate variable costs (janitorial, trash, utilities) from fixed costs (taxes, insurance, landscaping contracts). Re-run the gross-up on variable costs only. Check the multiplier against actual monthly occupancy reports, not an estimate.
Reconstruct the denominator
Pull rent roll data from Yardi or MRI for each month of the reconciliation year. Confirm the denominator in every tenant's calculation matches the GLA definition in their lease, not occupied area.
Audit the management fee base
Find the exact lease language defining what costs are included in the fee calculation base. Cross-check it against the actual figure your accounting system used. If CapEx, taxes, or insurance appear in that base, flag it.
Isolate ownership expenses
Export your GL. Search for corporate overhead allocations, leasing costs, legal fees, and above-property personnel costs. Any item hitting the CAM pool needs a paper trail that establishes it as a recoverable property expense.
Estimate your potential exposure before sending reconciliations with the CAM Leakage Estimator.
Documentation That Stops Disputes Cold
A correct reconciliation that's poorly documented is harder to defend than a well-documented one that's slightly off. Audit clauses give tenants 12-36 months to request records retroactively. The documentation gap on closed years reopens disputes that should be settled.
| Document | What It Proves | Common Gap |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice-to-GL reconciliation | Every dollar has a source document | Invoices don't match GL entries |
| CapEx amortization schedule | Capital items are spread over useful life | Full expensing in year one |
| Monthly occupancy reports | Gross-up applied at correct occupancy level | Approximated, not actual |
| Vendor contracts | Distinguishes fixed vs. variable costs | "We always estimated it" |
| Management fee base calculation | Fee applied to correct expense subset | Calculated on total expenses |
| Property vs. entity cost allocation | Ownership expenses excluded | Commingled ledger |
Use the CAM Pre-Send Checklist before sending reconciliations to verify each of these is ready.
Find the Errors Before the Auditor Does
CAMAudit automatically surfaces the errors in this guide against your actual Yardi or MRI data. Upload your CAM reconciliation and get a line-by-line discrepancy report before it goes out — or before an auditor requests your records.
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