Commercial property management
Leases, rent and billing —with the CAM reconciledto the cent.
Software for commercial buildings, not apartments: leases and their dates, rent and escalations, monthly invoices and tenant accounts, maintenance — and the year-end reconciliation every other tool leaves to a spreadsheet, calculated and shown line by line.
No sign-up for the demo · United States and Canada · QuickBooks Online opening soon
Step 3 of 5
The check
- Σ every tenant’s share
- before administrative fees
- $359,421.60
- + what the landlord absorbs
- vacancy, exclusions, caps, rounding
- $28,978.40
- = the recoverable pool
- what was actually spent
- $388,400.00
To the cent. The year can be frozen.
The screens on this page are the product’s own, with the figures of Northgate Plaza — the building the demo opens on.
Why commercial is different
A commercial building runs on clauses, not on a rent per door.
Most property software was built for apartments and stretched to fit a shopping center. It bills rent; it leaves the share of the costs, the escalations and the year-end true-up to a workbook — and a wrong statement looks exactly like a right one until a tenant’s lease administrator reads it.
Built for apartments
A unit and a rent. No pools, no pro-rata share, no gross-up, no cap — so the part of the lease that moves the most money lives somewhere else.
Money that leaks, unnamed
Vacancy, an exclusion, a cap that bit — every dollar not recovered has a reason, and a total that swallows them is money nobody goes looking for.
The spreadsheet, again
Sixty hours a year for seventy-five leases, a formula copied one row too far, and a statement the tenant contests on the one figure nobody can trace to a clause.
What it runs
The building, month to month — and the year, to the cent.
Each morning, one list says what needs you: a certificate expired, an inspection past due, a tenant two months behind, an option whose notice date is near. Every screen behind it is in the demo, on real figures.
Leases and critical dates
A lease across several suites, its rent and how it rises, and every date that costs money when it passes.
- Rent steps, fixed increases and CPI indexation
- Renewal, termination and expansion options
- Deposits and letters of credit
- Tenants’ insurance certificates
Billing and tenant accounts
One invoice per lease each month — rent and CAM estimate, by the day for a partial month — and an account that says what is owed.
- Invoices, credit notes, payments, statements of account
- Bank statement import, matched by a person
- Aging, late fees proposed, reminders
- Canadian GST, HST and QST; invoices in English, French or both
Maintenance that knows the CAM
A tenant asks by link, a vendor works by link — and the vendor’s invoice goes where it belongs.
- Requests with photos, no account for tenant or vendor
- Into the charges, onto one tenant, or to the owner
- Planned maintenance and required inspections
- Vendors’ insurance, checked before work is given
The CAM reconciliation
The year-end true-up, in the order that gets the right number — and a year that does not balance cannot be sent.
- Pools, gross-up, base years, caps, admin fees
- A statement per tenant under your letterhead
- Disputes answered beside the statement
- Recovery: what came back, and why the rest did not
Once a year: the reconciliation
The same five steps for every building, every year.
They are the five entries down the left of each building. The estimates you invoiced through the year are already there; the ledger comes in, the engine runs, and each step says where the year stands and what is left to do.
1Set-up
The building, its cost pools, its leases and their clauses — described once. Next year, it remembers.
2The ledger
Import the year’s expenses from any accounting export. Each line is placed against a category you named, by exact match — never guessed.
3Reconcile
The engine runs the year and shows the check. If it does not balance to the cent, the year cannot be frozen.
4Statements
One per tenant, under your letterhead, justified line by line. Print them, or send each by link.
5Recovery
What came back and what did not — vacancy, exclusions, caps — named and quantified, never absorbed into a total.
To place · 3
- Janitorial — January$3,500.00JanitorialCAM
- Common area electricity — Q1$14,500.00Common area electricityUtilities
- Property tax — first half$64,000.00Property taxTaxes
Each label placed once, by exact match. Next year it is placed already.
Recovered, of what was spent
$359,421.60 billed across 6 leases. $28,978.40 absorbed — and every dollar of it has a name.
- Proration$32,192.47
- Lease exclusions$8,640.00
- Caps$5,486.66
- Gross-up−$17,340.72
- Rounding−$0.01
The spreadsheet, and this
Where the workbook goes wrong, and what happens here instead.
| The workbook | ChargeRecoveries | |
|---|---|---|
| The check | A total that balances on whatever it was given | Shares + absorbed = spent, to the cent, or the year stays open |
| Caps | One formula, three kinds of cap, one of them wrong | Non-cumulative, cumulative, compounding — per lease, per year |
| Gross-up | Applied to the whole column, taxes included | Variable costs only, per lease with the clause |
| Administrative fee | Folded into the pool, so the check still balances | On top of the share, and the base excludes what the lease says |
| A tenant who moved in | A fraction typed by hand | Prorated by the day, from the lease |
| What the landlord absorbed | The plug that makes it add up | Named by cause: vacancy, exclusions, stops, caps, rounding |
| The statement | A PDF of a sheet | Under your letterhead, every line traced to its pool and clause |
| Next year | Copy the workbook, hope | The building remembers; import the ledger and run |
What the engine applies
The clauses in your leases, in the order that gets the right number.
You enter the rules a lease carries. The engine applies them — in a fixed order, because swapping two of these steps changes what a tenant owes. The rules follow the trade’s own teaching: IREM’s reconciliation course, the published lease forms, the worked examples every lease administrator learns from.
Pools
CAM, taxes, insurance, utilities — each pool with its own denominator, and a lease’s share in each.
Gross-up
Variable costs restated to standard occupancy, per lease that has the clause. Never taxes, never insurance.
Base years and stops
The tenant pays the excess over a reference year, pool by pool — a pool that falls never offsets one that rises.
Caps
Non-cumulative, cumulative, or cumulative compounding. Every ceiling, year by year, on its own register.
Administrative fees
Landlord revenue on top of the share — often excluding taxes and insurance — and never mixed into the pool.
Proration
A tenant who arrived in March owes March onwards. Days, not guesses.
The document that circulates
A statement a lease administrator can check on paper.
The artifact is not the app. It is the sheet that lands on a tenant’s desk, read on paper, often photocopied, before they decide whether to contest it. So every figure on it says where it came from: the pool, the share, the clause, the cap.
- Under your letterhead — your name, your logo
- Every line justified: the pool it came from and the clause that shaped it
- Supporting detail, one section per pool, all of it open when printed
- Sent by link, with a record of who received what and when
- A dispute answered on the thread, with the statement beside it
Meridian Property Group
Northgate Plaza · Reconciliation of operating expenses · 2025
Harbor Market
Suite 100 · 18,000 sq ft
| Your share of the pool | 36.0000% of $405,740.72 | $137,426.66 |
| Cap — 2% non-cumulative | controllable expenses, from 2023 | ($5,486.66) |
| Administrative fee | 15% of the share, before cap | $18,823.90 |
| Due for the year | ||
| Estimates billed | ($132,000.00) | |
| Balance due | $18,763.90 | |
Harbor Market’s 2025 statement in the demo, page 1. The full statement takes each pool category by category.
Works with the books you keep
Your general ledger stays where it is.
The tenants’ accounts live here; the books stay in your accounting. The expense ledger comes in from QuickBooks, Yardi, Sage, MRI or a workbook — any export saved as a CSV, its separators and date format declared, never guessed. And the QuickBooks Online connection is opening: invoices, credit notes and payments sent as they happen, each checked to the cent against what QuickBooks computed.
- CSV from any accounting export
- Format declared, never guessed
- Rent roll import for the leases
- QuickBooks Online — opening soon
Questions
Before you start.
What does it do, exactly?+
It runs commercial buildings: leases across suites with their rent steps and indexation, options, deposits and insurance certificates; one invoice per lease each month with credit notes, payments, a bank statement import, aging and reminders; maintenance requests from tenants and vendors who need no account; and the year-end CAM reconciliation with a statement per tenant. A list called Today says each morning what needs you.
Is it for apartments too?+
No. It is built for commercial leases — retail, office, light industrial — where tenants share the building’s costs through clauses. Residential utility billing is a different market and stays out of it.
What is CAM reconciliation?+
A commercial lease makes the tenant pay a share of the building’s operating costs on top of rent. Through the year the landlord bills an estimate; after year end the actual costs are known and the difference is settled — a true-up owed by the tenant, or a credit. The reconciliation is that settlement: which costs count, how they are shared, what each lease’s clauses do to the share, and the statement that says so.
Which lease clauses does it handle?+
Pro-rata shares on the building or on a pool, exclusions by category, gross-up of variable costs to a standard occupancy, base years and expense stops per pool, the three kinds of cap (non-cumulative, cumulative, cumulative compounding), administrative fees with their own base, and proration by the day. You enter the rule the lease carries; the engine applies it. It never interprets a lease for you.
Do I have to move my accounting?+
No. Your general ledger stays in your accounting. The tenants’ accounts — invoices, credits, payments — are kept here, and the expense ledger comes in as an export from whatever you keep the books in, its separators and date format declared, never guessed. The QuickBooks Online connection, which sends invoices, credits and payments as they happen, is opening soon.
Does it collect rent?+
Not yet. Payments are recorded as they arrive — by hand or from a bank statement import — and matched to invoices by a person. Online payment by card and ACH comes later, through Stripe.
What happens with a tenant who moved in mid-year, or a vacant suite?+
A lease is prorated by the day from its dates. A vacant suite’s share of the pool is not billed to anybody — it is what the landlord absorbs, and it is named as vacancy on the recovery report rather than hidden in a total.
Which markets does it cover?+
The engine’s rules are United States and Canada. The United Kingdom is a different set of rules under a different vocabulary, not a translation, and it is a later product. Australia is refused on purpose: a wrong statement format there entitles the tenant to withhold payment.
What does it cost?+
By the lettable unit, vacant ones included, in three formulas: Essential, Pro and Pro + AI. Each has a base that covers the first 5 units, then a price per unit beyond. Monthly or annual — annual is paid upfront for twelve months and costs less. Unlimited users, no cap on buildings or leases, no onboarding fees. The AI features of Pro + AI are coming, included the day they ship. The plans page has the figures.
Pricing
By the unit. Monthly or annual.
From $169 a month, billed yearly. Three formulas — Essential, Pro and Pro + AI — priced per lettable unit, the first 5 in the base. Unlimited users, no cap on buildings or leases, no onboarding fees. The AI features of Pro + AI are coming, included the day they ship.
Want the long version? Read how CAM reconciliation works.