Tools · CAM rec checklist

Your CAM rec just arrived. Use this first-hour checklist.

Checklist · August 2026 · Not legal or accounting advice

A year-end CAM, NNN, or operating-expense statement is easy to rubber-stamp. This page is the list a tenant, bookkeeper, or tenant-rep broker can print or forward on the day the packet lands. It is a reading order, not an audit, and not a substitute for the $79 landlord packet.

What this is (and is not)

The packet on your desk is the landlord’s version of a year-end settlement. During the year the tenant paid monthly estimates. After the books close, the landlord states a recoverable pool, applies the lease’s share and adjustments, and subtracts what was already paid. The difference is the true-up: a bill, a credit, or a near-zero settlement. The names change (CAM rec, NNN true-up, additional-rent settlement, OpEx reconciliation). The event is the same. See what a CAM true-up is if you need the one formula first.

This checklist is the first hour, not the last word. It does not decide whether a line is excluded. The lease’s definitions, inclusions, and exclusions control. It does not replace a CAM auditor, a CPA, or a lawyer. If the dollars are material or the window is short, get counsel. See CAM audit cost.

First hour: pull these from the lease

Open the lease (and any CAM exhibit, amendment, or commencement letter that restates the share) before you open the spreadsheet. You are looking for the clauses that will either confirm the statement or give you a written question inside the window. Write the clause number next to each item. If you cannot find a clause, write “not found” rather than guessing a market custom.

• Definition of Operating Expenses, Common Area Costs, CAM, or Additional Rent. That sentence is the pool, not the cover letter’s heading.
• Exclusions exhibit or the “shall not include” list. Mark anything on the statement that looks like a heading on the CAM exclusions chapter. The lease still wins.
• Pro-rata formula and the denominator: building GLA, rentable area, stipulated area, or a named square footage that does not float with vacancy.
• Gross-up: whether it exists, the occupancy target, and whether it applies only to variable expenses.
• Admin or management fee: the percentage, the base (controllable only, or all OpEx), and whether on-site payroll is already in that base.
• Cap: the percentage, what is controllable, what sits outside (often tax and insurance), and whether the cap is cumulative or year-by-year.
• Estimate mechanics: how monthly additional rent was set, and whether a mid-year revision was allowed.
• Delivery clock: when the landlord must send the annual statement (often a set number of days after year-end).
• Tenant objection / audit window: number of days, whether it runs from the letter date or from receipt, and whether the objection must name specific items.
• Pay-now-challenge-later: some forms require payment of the billed amount while the challenge proceeds. Some do not. Do not invent which one you have.
• Books-and-records right: who may inspect, where, at whose cost, and whether a “confidentiality” or “shortfall pays the audit” clause sits next to it.
• Fiscal year. Calendar year is common. It is not universal.

If the client or the store manager forwarded only the cover letter, stop and ask for the lease PDF (or at least the CAM exhibit) before you reconstruct a share. A first pass without the denominator clause is a sketch, not a check. Bookkeepers: see what a first pass actually is.

What to match on the statement

The statement should be reconcilable to the lease without translation. Put the letter next to the clauses you just pulled. You are matching labels, not yet arguing exclusions.

• Property name, tenant name, suite, and CAM year. Wrong year is a real error, not a nit.
• The denominator they used (GLA or other) versus the clause. Write both numbers on the letter.
• Tenant SF versus the lease (and versus any commencement letter that fixed the SF).
• Stated pro-rata %. Recompute it: tenant SF ÷ the denominator they used. If they used a different denominator than the lease names, that is the first written question.
• Gross CAM or OpEx total. Is it a pool after exclusions, or a raw GL dump?
• Gross-up line: occupancy %, target %, variable base, adjustment dollars.
• Admin / management fee: base and rate, not only the resulting dollars.
• Cap: prior-year controllable, this year’s controllable, cap %, reduction (or a statement that it did not bind).
• Estimates paid (the credits they subtracted). Match to the tenant’s cash or AP, not only to the landlord’s billings column.
• The true-up: allocated amount minus estimates. Direction (owe versus credit) and dollars.

Missing lines are information. A letter that shows only “your share of CAM” and a bill is not enough to check gross-up, fee, or cap. Request the rollup. The CAM reconciliation chapter is the spine for how those lines are supposed to sit.

Denominator

Pro-rata is usually tenant rentable square feet divided by building GLA (or whatever the lease names). We do not substitute a typical percentage. If the lease uses a stipulated area that ignores vacancy, enter that stipulated number as the denominator, not a measured vacant-adjusted GLA from a rent roll. A landlord that shrinks the denominator when the building is empty is increasing everyone’s share. Some leases allow that. Many forbid it. The clause, not the rent roll, decides.

On the homepage sample, 8,500 ÷ 100,000 = 8.5%. That 8.5% is an example. If your lease says 8,500 over a stipulated 95,000, the share is not 8.5%. Write the two square footages on the letter before you touch occupancy or fees.

Recoverable pool

The pool is not “everything the property spent.” It is the costs the lease lets the landlord recover after inclusions and exclusions. Capital items, vacancy costs the lease assigns to the landlord, insurance recoveries, landlord income taxes, off-site executive salaries, leasing commissions, tenant improvements for other tenants, debt service, depreciation, fines, above-market related-party charges, and unspent reserves are commonly marked. None of those is automatically out. The lease controls. Use the exclusions checklist to mark lines, then ask for the GL and a sample invoice. You do not need to win the argument in the first hour. You need a dated list of questioned lines.

For the wider category when the packet is labeled OpEx or additional rent rather than CAM, see operating-expense pass-throughs. When tax and insurance travel in the same envelope, see NNN true-up.

Gross-up

If the lease has a gross-up, variable expenses are restated as if occupancy had been at the target when the building ran emptier than that. Fixed costs (often tax and insurance) are not supposed to be grossed up. Occupancy support, a variable/fixed split, and the target percentage should be on the statement or in the backup. 95% is a common lease number. It is not a law. The homepage sample uses occupancy 82% and a 95% target as an example.

A statement that multiplies the entire pool by (target ÷ occupancy) is treating everything as variable. That may be what the lease allows. It may be an overstatement. Ask which costs were treated as variable. Simple calculator mode on this site does the full-pool treatment and labels it as an approximation. Advanced mode applies the factor only to the variable percentages you enter.

Admin / management fee

The fights are the base, the stacking, and the order. A 4% fee on controllable CAM after gross-up is a different dollar amount than 4% on raw spend, or 4% on a pool that already includes on-site salaries. We never assume a market fee percentage. The 4% in the homepage sample is an example. The statement should show the base and the rate, not only the fee line. If the fee and the same people’s salaries both sit in the pool, mark it and read the clause. Some leases allow that stack. Some treat the fee as a substitute for off-site overhead.

Cap

A cap usually limits how much controllable CAM can rise year over year. Non-controllable items (often real-estate taxes, insurance, sometimes utilities or snow) sit outside and pass through. You need three numbers: prior-year controllable, this year’s controllable after the adjustments the lease applies, and the cap percentage. If those three are missing, you cannot check the cap. We never assume a 3% or 5% “market” cap. The 5% and the $390,000 prior-year figure in the sample below are examples.

Order matters. This site’s calculator applies gross-up, then the fee, then the cap, then allocates. Some forms cap before the fee. Reconstruct theirs, then compare. Do not assume the calculator’s sequence is the lease’s sequence.

Estimates versus actual

The true-up is allocated recoverable CAM minus estimates paid. “Estimates paid” means what the tenant actually paid (or what the lease treats as paid), not what the landlord theoretically billed if a month is in dispute. Match the credit to the tenant’s cash or accounts payable. A missing month, a mid-year estimate change that was never booked, or a credit applied to base rent instead of additional rent will move the true-up even if the pool is right.

Positive = tenant owes. Negative = credit due to the tenant. Near zero is a settlement, not a finding that the pool is clean. A near-zero true-up can hide a line that does not belong.

Objection window

Write down four dates on the letter: last day of the CAM year, date on the letter (and the date you actually received it, if the lease runs from receipt), last day to request backup, and last day to send a written objection. Those clocks are contractual. Missing the tenant window can waive a challenge even if a line is wrong. This site does not tell you whether your window is open. Read the clause or ask counsel.

If the lease requires the objection to name specific items, a general “we disagree” may not preserve the claim. You do not need a finished legal memo on day one. You need a dated list: questioned lines, the clause you think applies, and the backup you have asked for. Send it inside the window. Delay on the landlord’s side does not always kill their claim, and it does not always extend yours.

Backup to request

The cover letter is a summary. The backup is how you test it. You do not need every invoice on day one. You do need enough to reconstruct the sequence and to mark exclusions. A typical written request (adapt it to the lease; do not treat this as a form that always works):

• General ledger or chart-of-accounts rollup that ties to the CAM / OpEx total on the letter.
• Sample invoices for the largest lines and for any line that looks like capital, legal, related-party, or “other.”
• Occupancy certificate or the rent roll used for the gross-up, plus the variable/fixed split.
• Fee calculation: base, rate, and whether on-site payroll is in the base.
• Cap calculation: prior-year controllable, current controllable, percentage, reduction.
• Estimates billed and estimates paid, by month, for this tenant.
• Insurance recoveries, warranty credits, and any amounts billed to a single tenant that should not sit in the common pool.
• Related-party vendor list, if the lease requires market-rate support.

Ask in writing. Date the email. If the lease says where to send notices, use that address too. The $79 packet includes a blank backup-request list you can fill. This page is the free version of the thinking, not that worksheet.

Worked EXAMPLE (homepage sample only)

The numbers below are the labeled sample on the homepage calculator. They are an example so you can reproduce the arithmetic. They are not a real building, not a recommended rate, and not a “standard CAM %.”

Print this. Then run the calculator.

This page is meant to be forwarded: to a partner, a bookkeeper, a tenant-rep broker, a controller. It is not the $79 packet. The packet is a two-page worksheet (line-item reconstruction plus a blank exclusion checklist with questioned-dollar lines and a backup request). This checklist is the free hook so someone knows what to pull and what to match. Type the landlord’s figures into the free calculator for the headline true-up. The calculator does not invent a market CAM rate. It reconstructs the usual sequence from the figures you type.