For property managers who operate multi-tenant buildings on triple-net or modified gross leases, cleaning costs are a CAM line item — passed through to tenants at reconciliation, documented annually, and subject to tenant audit rights in most commercial leases. How that line item is structured and documented affects both the ease of reconciliation and the likelihood of a tenant dispute.
What Goes Into CAM Cleaning
In a standard multi-tenant building in the Stillwater corridor, CAM cleaning typically includes:
- Common-area cleaning: lobbies, corridors, elevator cabs, stairwells
- Restroom service for shared restroom cores (as opposed to in-suite restrooms maintained by the tenant)
- Entry and vestibule maintenance
- Periodic hard-floor maintenance: buffing, stripping and waxing on scheduled rotations
- Window cleaning on common-area glass (interior and exterior of entry glass, lobby sidelights)
- Day porter services when present, prorated across the building's leasable area
What typically does not go into CAM cleaning: in-suite cleaning contracted directly by the tenant, specialized cleaning required by a specific tenant's operations, or extraordinary cleaning events (flood remediation, post-construction cleanup) not covered by the standard program.
Documentation Requirements
Most commercial leases in the Minnesota and Wisconsin markets give tenants the right to audit CAM charges within a defined window — commonly 12 months after the annual reconciliation statement. A cleaning line item that cannot be supported by a written contract, a scope of work, and itemized monthly invoices is exposed to challenge.
The cleaning program structure that holds up best to audit: a signed scope of work that predates the lease year, monthly invoices that match the scope by line item, and a clear distinction between base-program costs and any out-of-scope charges. Supply costs, if included, should appear as a separate line item on invoices rather than rolled into a gross cleaning fee.
Proration Across Tenants
CAM cleaning costs are typically prorated by tenant square footage as a percentage of total leasable area. A tenant occupying 4,000 of 20,000 sq ft carries 20% of the cleaning CAM. This is straightforward for the base program.
Where proration gets complicated: a tenant with a high-traffic use (medical practice, financial services with frequent client visits) that puts disproportionate wear on common areas versus a back-office tenant with minimal visitor traffic. Some leases address this with use-type adjustments; most do not. If your building has significant use-type disparity, worth reviewing with your attorney at lease renewal rather than relying on a cleaning vendor to resolve it operationally.
Winter Uplift in the Stillwater Market
Buildings in the Saint Croix Valley face a consistent seasonal cost driver that is worth budgeting explicitly rather than absorbing as a variance. From November through March, salt, sand and ice-melt product tracked in from parking lots and entry approaches increases floor cleaning frequency and accelerates hard-surface wear. Buildings with tile lobbies and sealed-concrete corridors typically see a 15–25% increase in cleaning labor during the salt season.
Including a seasonal uplift line item in the CAM budget — rather than discovering it at reconciliation — makes the annual true-up more predictable for tenants and reduces the chance of a dispute over an unexplained cleaning cost spike.
Getting Invoicing Right
If you are currently receiving cleaning invoices that show only a gross monthly fee, ask your vendor to break them out by service type: common-area cleaning, restroom programs, day porter if applicable, supplies. This takes one request and makes the annual reconciliation straightforward. Vendors who resist that request are typically embedding margin in the gross fee that would become visible at that level of detail.
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