The rent roll and the leases disagree, and nobody can say which is wrong

Before anyone decides the rent roll is wrong, note that 4 differences between it and the lease files are legitimate. Timing conventions, the mechanic used to deliver abatement, what the roll counts as rent, and amendments signed after the abstract was written all produce a genuine gap between billed rent and lease-derived rent, and none of them is a mistake.

That is why the usual response — sample 40 suites, count the mismatches, escalate the percentage — produces a number nobody can act on. The variance rate is meaningless until you know how much of it is convention. One suite, taken apart completely, settles that in an afternoon.

Take one suite apart completely before you sample anything

1. Choose the suite with the largest absolute variance, not the largest percentage. A 4% gap on a small unit is noise; the money and the diagnosis both sit in the big lines.
2. Derive the figure from the lease in order: base rent for the current period, then every executed amendment in date sequence, then the escalation the clause actually specifies, then abatement for this month, then any item the lease makes payable monthly as additional rent.
3. Pull the billed amount for the same month from the ledger broken out by charge code. A single total is exactly the thing that hides the answer.
4. Line the 2 up component by component, never total against total. A matching total with mismatched components is a coincidence that will break the month a step date lands.
5. Write down which component differs and by how much, then check that difference against the 4 causes below before calling anything an error.

The roll is a snapshot and the lease is a rule

A rent roll states a position as at a date. A lease states a rule that generates positions. Three ordinary conventions sit between them and each produces a persistent, harmless variance.

• Rounding order. Annual rent of 25,000 divided by 12 is 2,083.333; billed at 2,083.33 the year totals 24,999.96. Derive monthly from annual and you are 4 hundredths out for ever, on every line, which makes an exact-match reconciliation fail everywhere and mean nothing.
• Proration basis. A lease commencing on the 15th prorates by actual days in the month or on a 30/360 convention, and February makes the 2 diverge visibly. The lease may not say which, in which case the convention is a decision somebody made once and nobody wrote down.
• Area basis. Rent quoted per rentable area is not rent quoted per usable area, and the load factor between them commonly runs into double digits. If the roll stores one measure and the lease quotes the other, every derived figure is out by that factor. Measurement standards such as those published by BOMA define the basis; the abstract has to record which one this lease used.

One more timing difference is not a variance at all. Finance's straight-line figure spreads fixed consideration across the term, so it equals the contractual cash rent only in the months that happen to sit at the average. Comparing a straight-line report to a rent roll will show a difference in almost every month, correctly, which is why the 2 measures need separate columns and separate names rather than a reconciliation.

Free rent arrives by 3 different mechanics

An abstract that records 3 months free cannot reproduce the billing, because the phrase does not say how the concession is delivered. It may be billed at zero for 3 consecutive months, or billed in full with a separate credit line, or spread as a reduced charge over a longer period. Each produces a different rent roll figure for the same lease and the same total concession.

So the abstract needs the abatement schedule month by month, the mechanic, and whether the concession is recapturable on default — because a recapturable abatement is a contingent receivable that a roll showing zero will never surface. While you are in that part of the file, check that deposits are not netted anywhere: a security deposit or a pre-lease sum of the kind described in what a holding deposit commits both sides to is not rent, and offsetting it against arrears inside the roll destroys both numbers.

What the roll calls rent and what the lease calls rent are different sets

Leases routinely define operating expense contributions, insurance, taxes, percentage rent, parking, storage and signage as rent. Rent rolls frequently show base rent alone in the column labelled rent, and sometimes show base plus recoveries. Neither is wrong. Comparing one to the other without a mapping guarantees a variance equal to whichever items sit on the wrong side of the line.

Write the mapping from lease concept to charge code once, store it beside the abstract, and reconcile per charge code. Recoveries also settle on their own cycle rather than monthly, so a difference in that component is usually a reconciliation timing question of the sort handled in checking a true-up before you pay it rather than a rent roll defect at all. And where the differing component is the escalation itself, the search moves to the inputs, which is the separate investigation in the index-linked increase that came out wrong.

The document the roll knows about and the abstract does not

This is the only cause on the list where the roll is likelier to be right than the abstract. Abstraction happens once, at a point in time. Billing is maintained continuously by people who receive the side letter extending a rent-free period, the licence for extra storage, the consent that changed the tenant's name, and the amendment agreed by email and signed a month later.

The test is a question rather than a query: ask the property manager for everything signed on this suite since the abstract date, and compare. Where a document exists that the abstract never saw, the disposition is to correct the abstract and re-derive, not to correct the roll. Where no such document exists and the roll still disagrees, the billing is out and the correction runs the other way.

A rent roll and a lease abstract are two derivations of the same agreement. When they disagree, the useful question is which derivation is wrong, not which document is.

Every line ends in one of 3 dispositions

A variance with no owner is a variance you will see again next month

The reconciliation that gets run once and celebrated is the one that returns identically in 30 days, because nothing about it was owned. Each open line needs a named person, a due date and one of the 3 dispositions, tracked the same way any other commitment is — the pattern in an obligation register with a named owner per line. Aggregate ownership by team produces aggregate inaction.

Building this as a monthly job that derives rent from the abstract, compares per charge code, and opens an owned exception only where the shape is unexplained, is ordinary internal tools and ops work. The value is not the report; it is that conventions get written down once instead of re-argued by whoever is on the file. This page sits in lease administration, obligations and critical dates, part of real estate and proptech software.

• rent roll
• lease administration
• reconciliation
• data quality