Real Estate Portfolio Management / Cost Administration / Cost Administrator

Managing Common Area Maintenance Costs (CAM): Overview

ARCHIBUS simplifies Common Area Maintenance (CAM) reconciliation reporting by automatically calculating CAM estimates, and enabling you to add CAM adjustments that reconcile the actual and estimated costs. The CAM Reconciliation report enables you to analyze CAM cost performance, while the CAM Cash Flow report provides a detailed accounting of CAM costs when tenants require this.

For both the landlord and tenant's cost administrators, ARCHIBUS provides the following tasks to simplify CAM accounting:

Task	Task Description	Learn more...
Lease Cost Profile / CAM Profile tab	Set up a CAM profile for a lease. This is a one-time task that automates the calculation of estimated CAM costs using the allocation method and frequency you specify in the profile. The application calculates these estimates and enters the costs as recurring costs using the new recurring cost category - RENT-CAM ESTIMATE. The landlord's cost administrator can schedule and approve these CAM estimates using the Cost Wizard. Either scheduled or approved costs are included in the CAM Cost Estimate total shown for the lease in the CAM Cost Reconciliation Report. Review all the estimated CAM cost records for a selected lease and year. You can review both scheduled and approved CAM estimates, and can export the data to Excel.	Adding a CAM Profiles for a Lease Scheduling Recurring Costs
Lease CAM Reconciliation Report	The landlord's financial accounting system provides the CAM adjustment for the year. This is the difference between the lease's share of the approved CAM costs incurred throughout the year, and the estimated costs the tenant paid. This CAM adjustment amount is what the cost administrator enters into ARCHIBUS. The cost administrator for the landlord enters the CAM adjustment received from their financial system into ARCHIBUS. The cost administrator for the tenant receives the CAM adjustment from the landlord in the form of an invoice or a credit, and enters this CAM adjustment amount into ARCHIBUS. When you enter and save a CAM adjustment amount, the application saves this as a scheduled cost record using the RENT - CAM RECONCILIATION cost category you select. Either scheduled or approved CAM adjustments are included in the report. For a specific lease and year, the Lease CAM Reconciliation report provides the total estimated CAM costs, the total actual CAM costs, and the difference between the two. This report enables you to evaluate CAM cost performance by providing the difference, and the percentage difference by year for each lease.	Adding CAM Adjustments Lease CAM Reconciliation Report
CAM Cash Flow Report	The cost administrator can generate the Cash Flow Report for costs marked as CAM. This report provides a detailed accounting of CAM costs when a tenant requires it.	CAM Cash Flow Report
Tasks for the ARCHIBUS Cost Administrator
Adding Cost Categories	If needed, the ARCHIBUS Cost Administrator can define cost categories to track CAM costs by subcategories. For example, "RENT- CAM ESTIMATE - ELECTRICAL", "RENT - CAM ESTIMATE - WATER", or "RENT - CAM ESTIMATE - SECURITY." You could also define application parameters for CAM Adjustments that correspond to these cost categories for estimates, so that you can reconcile costs by their subcategory.	Define Cost Categories and Classes
Tasks for the ARCHIBUS Administrator The ARCHIBUS Administrator performs the following task when the cost administrator has given additional names to the RENT - CAM ESTIMATE and RENT - CAM RECONCILIATION cost categories.
ARCHIBUS Administrator - Application Configuration / Configure Application Parameters task	If your cost administrator has renamed CAM cost categories or has defined new cost categories for CAM estimates and CAM adjustments, you can enter the alternate names as application parameters. This ensures that the application includes all these costs in the Lease CAM Reconciliation and CAM Cash Flow reports. The CAM_Reconciliation parameter will store alternate names for the RENT - CAM RECONCILIATION cost category The CAM _Estimate cost category will store alternate names for the RENT _ CAM Estimate cost category	Entering alternative names for the CAM Cost categories