Commercial lease management software is only as good as what was entered into it, and what was entered is an abstraction of each lease made by a person reading a long document. That abstraction is the product's foundation and the part buyers pay least attention to. This page is what to abstract and how to check it, for anybody about to populate a system.
What abstraction actually is
Reading each lease and recording its operative terms in structured fields: parties, demise, term, rent and every scheduled change, recovery basis, options and breaks with their notice mechanics, deposit or guarantee, and any unusual obligation. It is slow and it is the whole value: everything the system later tells you is a restatement of this.
The fields that get abstracted wrongly
Notice mechanics, because they are often spread across two clauses and a definition. Recovery basis, because the apportionment is sometimes in a schedule rather than the body. And rent review method, because the trigger and the formula are separable and a summary tends to capture one. These three account for most abstraction errors and all three are expensive.
Check by sampling, not by trusting
Take a random tenth of the abstracted leases and have a second person check them against the documents, before the system goes live rather than after. Errors cluster: an abstractor who misread one option clause has probably misread the others. Sampling finds the pattern while it is still cheap to correct across the set.
Keep the document beside the abstract
Every abstracted field should be one click from the clause it came from, so a challenge can be resolved by reading rather than by re-abstracting. Systems that store the abstract and archive the document separately make every verification a search, which is the friction that eventually stops people verifying at all.
Questions people ask about commercial lease management software
Should the vendor do the abstraction?
Many offer it and it is often good value. Sample-check it exactly as you would your own, because the accountability stays with you.
How long does abstraction take per lease?
For a commercial lease with recoveries and options, longer than people expect. Budget it as a project rather than as an afternoon.
What if a lease has been varied several times?
Abstract the current position and record which documents produced it. A system showing the original terms of a much-amended lease is confidently wrong.