Month-End CAM Controls for Property Accounting Teams

Check that landscaping, janitorial, security, elevator maintenance, and utility invoices for the month are in hand and coded. Flag any vendor that did not invoice — a missing invoice is more often a lost invoice than no service performed.

Review all repair and maintenance postings for the month. Any single item above your capitalization threshold (typically $5,000–$10,000) requires explicit sign-off that it is operating expense, not a capital improvement.

Post the month's management fee accrual at the contracted rate on the correct base. Verify the base amount matches the lease definition — some leases compute the fee on controllable expenses only; others use total recoverable expenses.

Verify that every tenant's monthly CAM estimate payment posted to the correct account. Misapplied payments — applied to base rent instead of CAM, or to the wrong tenant — create errors in the year-end true-up calculation.

Pull the current aging for CAM estimate receivables. Any tenant past 30 days should receive a written payment notice. Letting estimate arrearages compound makes year-end collection significantly harder — a tenant 6 months behind on estimates will receive a true-up bill on top of the arrearage.

Compare cumulative actual recoverable expenses through the month against cumulative estimated payments collected. If actual expenses are running 10% or more above estimates, consider whether mid-year estimate adjustments are warranted or whether year-end true-ups will be unusually large.

Confirm no corporate overhead allocations, inter-company charges, or non-property items were posted to the property GL during the month. These items are not recoverable and must be removed before the year-end export — it is easier to remove them monthly than to hunt for them in December.

Verify that property tax and insurance postings for the month match the annual payment schedule. A missed accrual month for property taxes — which may be billed quarterly or semi-annually — creates a year-end accrual adjustment that is easy to forget.

Beyond the threshold check (control 2), review the descriptions of repair and maintenance postings for any work that sounds like a capital project — roof replacement, parking lot resurfacing, HVAC system replacement. These sometimes appear in multiple smaller invoices designed to stay below the capital threshold.

All vendor invoices processed in the month should be filed — either physically or digitally — in an organized system accessible for the year-end reconciliation. Invoices retrieved from email inboxes in March are a common source of version inconsistencies.

If any lease amendments were executed during the month, update the lease amendment register with the amendment date, the lease section(s) affected, and the impact on CAM calculations (if any). This register is the reference document for the year-end reconciliation.

Any open items from the prior month's controls — disputed invoices, unapproved repair items, missing accruals — should be resolved before the current month's close. Open items that persist across multiple months compound into material reconciliation discrepancies by year-end.