Service charge audit
You receive an annual reconciliation with a single amount to pay. An audit checks what that amount is made of and whether it matches your lease.
Free review of your reconciliationWe represent tenants only. Never building owners.
We check whether the annual reconciliation of building costs matches your lease and market levels. Not only whether the arithmetic adds up, but whether you should be paying for those items at all.
- Also called
- service charge, operating costs, common area costs
- What we check
- cost catalogue, apportionment, invoice allocation, price levels
- Time you have
- usually three years to challenge a reconciliation
The second largest cost of an office, and the only one whose size you do not know on signing
Service charges are paid in monthly advances for twelve months before anyone checks what the building actually cost. The advance is not a price: after the year ends the landlord compares it with the costs it attributed to the building and settles the difference with a surcharge or a refund.
Source: OfficeList Pulse, Warsaw, as at 12 September 2026. Rent converted at the NBP rate of PLN 4.3228 per euro.
A landlord should not profit from service charges. But it does not pay them out of its own pocket either, it pays them with tenants' money. Which is why there is no incentive to optimise those costs.
An audit is not only about the refund
A refund tends to be the most visible outcome, but rarely the most important one. An audit answers what you are paying for over the whole lease term, not just in a single year.
Where your money is
The error returns in the next advance
The advance for the following year is calculated from a reconciliation nobody checked. An uncorrected mistake stays with you for another twelve months.
Someone else's costs on your invoice
Discounts granted to other tenants and the cost of vacant space can end up in your share. Without the apportionment key you cannot see it.
Not every cost is operating cost
Refurbishments, structural repairs, valuations for the bank, the owner company's accounting. They reach reconciliations although they are not building upkeep.
What you get beyond a refund
Errors run both ways
An audit also shows items settled against the landlord's interest. In a conversation that carries more weight than a list of accusations.
A view wider than one year
A reconciliation reveals multi-year service contracts. Neglected servicing comes back years later as the cost of a breakdown.
A point of reference
Deviation from the market standard is visible immediately. With several locations, start by comparing your own buildings.
Ten questions for your next reconciliation
Before you order an audit, go through this list. Tick every question you would answer with „I don't know”. Three or more of those is the moment for an audit, because without the answers you cannot verify the reconciliation yourself.
Ticked: 0 of 10. Work through the questions and we will tell you what that means.
What we check in an audit
Checking the arithmetic of the invoices alone misses the point. The amount can add up to the last złoty and still be built from items that should never have been charged to you. We run the audit in four layers.
The lease: what may go into the costs
We start with the wording, because it decides everything that happens later. We check whether the cost catalogue is closed or opened by the phrase „in particular”, which hands the decision to the landlord. Whether there are definitions separating repair from improvement. Whether you have the right to audit and to see documents, a cap on management fees and a cap on the annual increase of controllable costs.
Apportionment: how much of those costs is yours
We verify the percentage share against the lease and against the real area of the building. We check the denominator, because a share calculated on let area rather than total area shifts the cost of vacant space onto current tenants. In mixed-use buildings we look at whether the office part subsidises retail, hotel or parking.
Cost items: what actually entered the reconciliation
We go through the items and the allocation of invoices between the building, the common parts and individual tenants. We look for capital expenditure booked as running costs, owner company costs, mark-ups on utilities resold to tenants, related suppliers and the cost of vacant space. We also check building income, for example from parking, because it should reduce the reconciliation.
Benchmark: how you compare with the market
We compare the cost level and the structure of items with OfficeList Pulse data and with buildings of a similar standard and age. An older building can legitimately be more expensive to run; we look for items that stand out without a reason.
What the reconciliation table does not show
Three situations below came out only in an audit. Each involved an item the reconciliation table itself does not show. In an unofficial record kept over a decade ago by an audit team Maciej Banaszak worked in, more than 90% of the irregularities found worked in the landlord’s favour.
From the conversation „10 office management mistakes that cost millions” (in Polish). Full episode with a summary and transcript
Three examples from audits run by Maciej Banaszak
An exchange rate in the third decimal place
The rate used to convert the invoices differed from the correct one only in the third decimal place, in the landlord’s favour. On a single invoice that is pennies and looks like a technical detail. Across twelve months and every tenant in the building it turns into an amount nobody noticed.
An energy-hungry unit wired to the shared meter
A retail unit on the ground floor was wired to the common meter, so its electricity bill was split between all the tenants in the building. The reconciliation shows one line and one amount for electricity, nothing more. It came out only from a comparison with other buildings in the same portfolio.
Board members’ flight tickets in the service charge
A case from over a decade ago at one of the larger landlords on the Polish market. An item large enough that it is hard to put down to simple oversight. It only came out because the tenant asked for the source documents.
Why this goes through at all
It is rarely bad faith. The person preparing the reconciliation does not know your lease, people change on the property manager’s side, and the absence of an audit in previous years cements whatever scheme was adopted. What remains is a difference in access to information that no system removes: the landlord holds every invoice and every service contract, the tenant receives a category name and an amount. Some of these errors could once be put down to manual work; today reconciliations are calculated by systems, but the documents are still on one side.
„It is worth challenging an item even without being certain that something went wrong. The question is always worth asking, and the lease usually entitles you to the documents. It may turn out everything is in order. But showing the landlord that you are watching closely does matter.”
Maciej Banaszak (translated from Polish)
Who runs the audit
- 20 years
- in corporate real estate, workplace and facility management
- 6
- global real estate organisations
- EMBA
- graduate and lecturer at the Warsaw University of Technology Business School
Maciej Banaszak
Founder of Opulo Advisory
He started in business risk management at Ernst & Young and as an internal auditor at JLL. He then spent thirteen years on the advisory side building portfolio management operations for global corporations, and the last five receiving reconciliations as the tenant, for over a hundred Amazon offices across EMEA. So he reads a service charge from three positions at once: the auditor, the portfolio manager and the one paying.
- Start
- Business Risk Services at Ernst & Young, advising on business risk management
- 13 years
- JLL: first an internal auditor, later a director building portfolio management operations for global clients, including lease administration for a client with over 4,000 properties in more than 20 countries
- 5 years
- Amazon, Global Real Estate & Facilities: central operations for the EMEA portfolio and office management transformation projects, over 100 offices in more than 30 countries
- Today
- runs Opulo Advisory, advising corporate real estate organisations on building teams, processes and technology, and teaches problem solving and decision making on the Executive MBA at the Warsaw University of Technology Business School
„Where a lease has not been audited for a few years and all we did were general cost checks without going into detail, the savings from an audit comfortably cover its cost as a rule. There is no guarantee, of course, but in the long run an audit simply pays for itself.”
Maciej Banaszak in conversation with Filip Sarzyński
At Brookfield Partners the audit is part of advising a tenant, not a service sold to both sides of the market. So there is no situation in which we challenge the reconciliation of a building we are letting ourselves. How our advisory model works
How we work together
Conversation and initial review
We look at the reconciliation and the lease provisions. After this step you know whether there is anything to look for. Free of charge.
Scope and documents
We agree which years the audit covers and request the source documents from the landlord.
Analysis
The four layers described above. Usually four to eight weeks from the moment documents are made available.
Report
A list of items to challenge with their contractual basis and the amount in dispute.
Conversation with the landlord
We negotiate the refund and carry the findings into an addendum, so the same error does not return every year.
How much time you have
That is how long you have to challenge a reconciliation and recover an overpayment. A 2023 reconciliation can be challenged until the end of 2026. After that the money stays with the landlord.
Without an audit clause and access to documents you are left with a request. The landlord may refuse, and you are left with litigation.
An open cost catalogue means the landlord decides what counts as a service charge cost. A court will settle it one day, but years later and at your expense.
The deadlines above are indicative, as the details depend on the wording of the particular lease. This is information, not legal advice.
An audit is a remedial tool
What you pay over the next five years is decided earlier, when the cost provisions are negotiated. Three places to start.
I will review your reconciliation
Tell me which building you are in and what you received from the landlord. I reply within 24 working hours and say plainly whether there is anything worth fighting for. You send the documents in reply to my e-mail, and we review them in confidence.
Service charge audit - frequently asked questions
What is a service charge audit?
Can I demand an audit if my lease does not mention one?
How long do I have to challenge a reconciliation?
Does an audit damage the relationship with the landlord?
What does an audit cost and does it pay off?
The reconciliation ended with a refund. Is an audit still worth it?
What does the tenant need to provide?
How is a service charge audit different from a technical audit?
Did you just receive a reconciliation?
Before you pay the surcharge, check what the amount is made of. The first review is free and takes a few days.
Send your reconciliation for review