Most commercial leases make the tenant share some of the building's costs: the landscaping, the parking-lot lights, the snow removal, the insurance, the property taxes. The industry calls these CAM charges, for common area maintenance. Through the year the tenant is charged an estimate each month. At year end someone has to check the estimate against the real costs. That check is the true-up.
A CAM true-up compares what the tenant paid through the year with what the lease says they owe. The first number is simple: the sum of the monthly estimates. The second number is where the work is. It depends on the real costs of the building and on the terms of that tenant's lease. Two tenants in the same building can owe very different amounts for the same year.
The lease terms that change the answer are ones a controller already knows. The pro-rata share is the tenant's fraction of the building. The cap is a limit on how much the charge may rise from one year to the next. Many leases cap only controllable costs and leave taxes, insurance and utilities outside it. The base year, or the expense stop, means the tenant owes only the costs above a stated year or a stated amount. The gross-up is how costs are stated when the building was not full. The admin fee is a fee on top, and the lease says what it is charged on. The exclusions are costs the lease says the tenant never shares, and some leases name costs the lease adds back in. A few leases run their recovery year from a date that is not the calendar year.
Komod reads these terms from the lease. For each one it shows the page and the words it came from. If the lease states a cap but not how the cap carries from year to year, that is a question for you, not a guess. If the lease names an admin fee but not what it is charged on, that is a question too. A term that is not in the lease is not invented.
With the terms in hand, Komod works them against the building's real costs for the year and arrives at what the tenant owes. Then it subtracts what the tenant paid. The result is the true-up: a balance due from the tenant, or a credit back to them.
Komod puts the difference on a card. The card shows the tenant, the year, what was paid, what is owed, and the lease terms behind it, each linked to its page in the lease. Where a term was unclear, the card asks you to choose before it can be approved. You can approve it, change it, or send it back.
Nothing is billed until a person clicks. Komod does not send the tenant a statement. It does not post the balance to the books on its own. The controller reads the card and decides. After the click the entry is approved and can go to QuickBooks, and the owner sees the figure in the monthly report with its sources attached.
Why a card and not just a number? Because a true-up is where the money and the lease meet, and both can be wrong. The estimate may have been set too low. The lease may have an amendment that moved the share. A cost may sit in the pool that the lease excludes. Each of those is a judgement. Komod does the reading and shows its sources. The judgement stays with you.
The same is true the other way. If the true-up says the tenant is owed a credit, that credit is also a card. It waits for the same click. A tenant is never billed, and never credited, by software acting alone.
If you have ever sat with a spreadsheet and a stack of leases, this is that work made into a queue of cards. The terms are found for you. The sources are attached. The click is yours.