Common area maintenance charges are one of the most frequently disputed line items in commercial lease reconciliations. Cleaning is the element tenants can see, which makes it the element they question most often. Getting the cleaning budget right — and being able to document it — reduces disputes and builds credibility with your tenants at annual reconciliation.

What Cleaning Costs Belong in CAM

The general rule in most triple-net and modified gross leases is that cleaning of landlord-controlled spaces is a CAM expense. This includes:

  • Lobby and entry vestibule cleaning
  • Shared corridor cleaning on all floors
  • Elevator cab cleaning and maintenance
  • Shared restrooms (restrooms not within a tenant's leased premises)
  • Shared amenity spaces: conference rooms available to all tenants, break rooms, mail rooms
  • Stairwells and fire-door landings
  • Restroom supply restocking for shared restrooms

Tenant suite cleaning is typically excluded from CAM unless the lease specifically includes it. Day porter services that cover tenant-suite areas should be scoped and billed separately from the CAM-eligible common area program.

How to Build the Budget Line

The most defensible CAM cleaning budget starts with a per-square-foot figure tied to the actual common area square footage, not a percentage of the building's total leasable area. Here is the logic:

If your building has 60,000 square feet of total leasable area and 8,000 square feet of common area (lobby, corridors, stairwells, restrooms), your cleaning program should be priced on that 8,000 square feet at the appropriate service frequency. Pricing on total leasable area inflates the number and creates reconciliation exposure if a tenant asks how the figure was calculated.

A written contract with your cleaning vendor that specifies the exact square footage being cleaned, the service frequency, and the monthly rate gives you the documentation you need for the CAM line item and for any tenant audit request.

Supply Costs

Restroom supplies — paper towels, toilet paper, hand soap, seat covers, waste liners — are a CAM-eligible expense when they serve shared restrooms. The most common documentation problem is that supply costs are passed through without a line-item breakdown, which triggers questions. A cleaning contract that includes supply restocking at contracted pricing with a monthly supply report showing quantities consumed by product type eliminates this question before it's asked.

In Eden Prairie's multi-tenant office market, typical monthly supply costs for a building with six to ten shared restrooms range from $150 to $400 per month, depending on occupancy density and usage patterns. Buildings with medical or food-service tenants tend toward the higher end of this range due to higher paper consumption and more frequent soap replacement.

Seasonal Adjustments

Minnesota property managers who budget a flat monthly cleaning figure for the full year often find that winter months generate cost overruns. Salt season in the Twin Cities metro runs from November through March, and lobby and vestibule cleaning during this period is materially more intensive than in the summer. A well-structured cleaning budget accounts for this with either a slightly elevated flat annual rate or an explicit winter-season adjustment line.

If your lease allows for CAM adjustments on a documented cost basis, a cleaning contract with a winter protocol addendum gives you the documentation to support any seasonal adjustment claim.

Reconciliation Documentation

At year-end CAM reconciliation, the cleaning documentation that holds up best consists of: the signed cleaning contract specifying scope and price, monthly invoices showing any supply line items separately, and a service log confirming the contracted service was performed. If your cleaning vendor cannot provide a service log, that is a problem regardless of the reconciliation.

To discuss how we document cleaning services for CAM purposes, call (866) 958-8773 or request a written quote.