Lease Administration
Stop paying your landlord more than your lease allows.
Surfaice performs end-of-year CAM reconciliation for retail leases — starting from your lease terms, not the landlord's statement. Every charge is validated, every cap applied, every overcharge flagged.
Landlords overbill CAM more often than most tenants realise. Misapplied caps, disallowed capital expenses, inflated management fees and GLA errors are common — and go unchallenged when teams don't have time to reconcile every line against the lease. Across a portfolio of 200+ locations, even small per-store overcharges add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
A real reconciliation
Store #1847, end-of-year statement.
The landlord's statement arrived. Surfaice ran the full reconciliation in under two minutes.
Lease obligation
$261,530
Per approved lease terms
Landlord claimed
$279,970
Actual payments made
Credit due
($18,440)
Overcharge — dispute recommended
Items flagged
3
Requiring review
| Expense category | Landlord claimed | Lease-approved | Variance | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning & Janitorial | $38,240 | $38,240 | — | Approved |
| Common Area Utilities | $61,480 | $61,480 | — | Approved |
| Security Services | $29,600 | $29,600 | — | Approved |
| Parking Lot Resurfacing | $48,000 | $0 | ($48,000) | Excluded — CapEx |
| Management Fee | $28,410 | $21,400 | ($7,010) | Capped — §8.2 |
| Landscaping & Grounds | $22,910 | $22,910 | — | Approved |
| Insurance — Property | $31,200 | $27,800 | ($3,400) | Flag — +18% YoY |
| Administrative Fee | $20,130 | $20,100 | ($30) | Rounding |
Obligation $261,530 − paid $279,970 = ($18,440)
The landlord owes the tenant. Surfaice recommends booking the receivable and notifying the landlord before the audit window closes.
Nine overcharge categories, on every statement.
Most teams only catch what stands out. Surfaice checks everything, systematically, against the actual language of your lease — not the landlord's template.
Capital expenditures
Parking lots, roof replacements, HVAC — capital items billed as operating expenses.
Management fee caps
Fees exceeding the contractual cap on net approved base, commonly miscalculated.
Base year exclusions
Non-recurring costs included in the base year that inflate year-over-year comparisons.
Anchor exclusions
Anchor tenant space costs allocated to inline tenants against the lease terms.
GLA calculation errors
Pro-rata share based on incorrect gross leasable area — common after tenant mix changes.
Insurance overcharges
Premiums above actual cost, or for coverage not required under the lease.
Administrative markups
Admin fee layered on top of the management fee, creating a double-charge.
Non-CAM charges
Items classified as CAM that are explicitly excluded under your lease's CAM definition.
Year-over-year anomalies
Category increases that outpace prior years, market rates or CPI caps — flagged for review.
How it works
What happens when you upload a statement.
Six steps, run automatically. Every decision grounded in your specific lease terms, not the landlord's math.
- 01
Pull your lease abstract
Surfaice reads your executed lease from Lucernex: CAM definition, base year, cap type, exclusions, pro-rata share and audit rights window.
- 02
Parse the landlord's statement
Every line item is ingested, normalised and mapped to a standard CAM taxonomy — while preserving the landlord's original category names for comparison.
- 03
Apply your lease-defined exclusions
Capital expenditures, anchor exclusions and any lease-specific carve-outs are removed from the approved expense base before calculations run.
- 04
Validate pro-rata share
GLA figures are cross-checked against the lease. If the denominator changed, Surfaice flags the variance — it is one of the most common and least challenged errors.
- 05
Apply cap provisions exactly
Controllable expense caps, management fee caps and admin fee limits are applied per your lease language — not the landlord's interpretation of it.
- 06
Compute the true-up
Approved obligation compared to actual payments. Overcharges become recoverable credits with dispute language. Underpayments are flagged with timing and amount.
CAM reconciliation, answered.
What CAM billing errors does Surfaice typically find?
Common findings include capital expenditures billed as operating CAM, management fees above contractual caps, incorrect pro-rata share after GLA changes, base year items that should be excluded, anchor costs allocated to inline tenants, and insurance or administrative markups not permitted under the lease.
Does Surfaice replace our CAM audit consultant?
No. Surfaice accelerates first-pass reconciliation review and exception reporting across a portfolio. Your team or consultants still negotiate recoveries — line-item triage, dollar impact estimates and lease cross-checks happen in minutes instead of days per location.
Which documents do I need for a CAM reconciliation audit?
The landlord CAM reconciliation statement, operating expense detail, tax and insurance statements, and supporting invoices. Surfaice cross-checks charges against lease-defined CAM terms, exclusions and caps.
How does pro-rata share validation work?
The agent verifies tenant proportionate share calculations against gross leasable area in the lease and statement, including base year adjustments and occupancy-driven changes after tenant mix updates.
What deliverables do we get after a CAM audit?
Exception reports in Excel, PDF audit summaries for stakeholders, negotiation briefs with estimated recovery amounts, and JSON data for downstream accounting or lease admin systems.
Stop leaving money on the landlord's table.
Bring one statement and the lease behind it. You will see the variance in the first fifteen minutes.