Printable checklist
CAM Audit Checklist for Landlords and Tenants
A tenant’s audit right is usually a few lines in the lease, and the first audit request rarely arrives when you are ready for it. Use this checklist before you send a reconciliation, when a tenant asks to audit, or when you are the tenant reviewing a statement. Deadlines, scope and cost-shifting are set by each lease, so confirm every item against the signed lease and involve counsel before disputing or conceding a finding.
1. Know the audit right in the lease
6 items- Find the audit or inspection clause and read it in full: who may audit, which years, and which expenses.
- Note the deadline to request an audit, and what starts the clock (delivery of the statement or the end of the year).
- Note who may perform the audit: the tenant’s staff, an accountant, or a third-party auditor, and whether contingency-fee auditors are allowed.
- Note where and how records are made available, and any confidentiality requirement.
- Note who pays for the audit and any overbilling threshold that shifts the cost to the landlord.
- Note how a dispute is resolved if the parties disagree: continued discussion, arbitration, or another process.
2. Landlord: have the backup ready before you send statements
8 items- Keep invoices, receipts and contracts for every recoverable expense for the retention period the lease or your policy requires.
- Keep the general ledger detail and the bank reconciliation that ties the recoverable pool back to actual spending.
- Keep the allocation worksheet showing each tenant’s share, cap, exclusion, gross-up and administrative fee, with the lease section behind each rule.
- Document why each large or unusual expense is recoverable, and why capital items and owner costs were excluded.
- Document the management and administrative fee calculation against the lease’s limit.
- Document any charge from a related party, such as an owner-affiliated vendor, and how its price compares with the market.
- Record credits that reduce the pool, such as insurance proceeds, rebates and refunds, so they can be shown.
- Keep the occupancy figures and square footages the shares and any gross-up rely on.
3. Tenant: what to check in the statement
8 items- Confirm the tenant’s square footage and the denominator behind its pro-rata share against the lease.
- Compare each expense category with the lease’s definition of recoverable operating expenses.
- Look for excluded items billed as CAM: capital improvements, leasing commissions, owner overhead, fines, and costs of other tenants’ spaces.
- Check that any cap was applied in the order the lease specifies, and whether it is cumulative or non-cumulative.
- Check that a gross-up, if any, applies only to variable expenses and does not recover more than the actual cost.
- Check the administrative or management fee against the lease’s percentage and base.
- Look for duplicate invoices, costs from other periods, and credits that were not applied.
- Compare estimates billed with estimates paid, and recompute the true-up.
4. Run the audit
6 items- Acknowledge the request in writing within the time the lease requires.
- Agree in writing on the scope, the years, the auditor and the dates.
- Provide records at the agreed place and time, and keep a log of what was requested and supplied.
- Keep originals and give copies; do not change the reconciliation during the audit without documenting why.
- Answer questions in writing and keep a single point of contact.
- Involve counsel before agreeing that an item was billed in error or that the lease means something different.
5. Resolve and record
6 items- List each finding with the amount, the lease section and the proposed outcome.
- Issue a corrected statement for any agreed adjustment, and credit or refund the amount in the way the lease provides.
- Record any dispute that remains and the lease process for resolving it.
- Fix the cause so it does not repeat: a category mapping, a missing exclusion, or an unrecorded credit.
- Update next year’s reconciliation checklist and the tenant’s lease record with what you learned.
- Calendar the end of the audit window so you know when each year is closed.
Free template
Get the CAM reconciliation worksheet
The spreadsheet version: recoverable pool, each tenant's share, caps, proration, admin fee and the true-up balance. Comes with the reconciliation and audit checklists.
- CAM reconciliation worksheetSpreadsheet template
- CAM Reconciliation ChecklistPrintable checklist
- CAM Audit Checklist for Landlords and TenantsPrintable checklist
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