About Us

The Occupancy Cost Audit Group (OAG) is North America’s largest and oldest real estate lease recovery audit firm.  OAG provides a specialized audit recovery service to uncover hidden occupancy cost overcharges.  OAG has pioneered the recovery audit business through innovations and creativity in the audit industry.  Using proven auditing techniques and proprietary audit methodologies, we examine invoices, related leases, amendments, CC&R’s, REA’s and other real estate documents, searching for overbillings and overpayments.  OAG is the expert in identifying, validating and recovering lost profits quickly and efficiently, and assist businesses in improving their financial performance with insightful information, actionable recommendations and bottom-line results.

We perform more real estate occupancy cost recovery audits than any other firm and recover millions of dollars for a broad range of clients around the country.  Our competitive advantage is powered by our proven expertise, innovative technology, extensive database and superior service. Our team of real estate professionals is comprised of industry experts with extensive experience and impressive backgrounds in accounting, retailing and real estate.  Our professional auditors are educated, experienced and talented with an intuitive approach to auditing.  We employ a proven methodology that has been continually refined and improved by “best practices” developed over the past 20+ years.  Our focus is to build a long-term relationship with you and your team.  We still work with a number of clients we obtained from the early to mid 1990’s.  Our client relationships are important to us.  We understand the importance of not disrupting your daily operations so we streamline each phase of our audit process to be as unobtrusive as possible.  Our specialized team is focused and dedicated to serve your specific audit needs.

OAG is headquartered in Southern California and has Senior Associates nationwide.

Using proven auditing techniques and proprietary audit methodologies, we examine invoices, related Leases, Amendments, CC&R’s, REA’s and other critical real estate documents, searching for overbillings, overpayments any many other factors that would result in an errant transaction. We are the expert in identifying, validating and recovering lost profits quickly and efficiently, which result in improved financial performance and insightful information with actionable recommendations for sustained performance.

Our team of real estate professionals is comprised of industry experts with extensive experience and impressive backgrounds in accounting, retailing, property management and real estate. Our professional auditors are educated, experienced and talented. Their intuitive approach to auditing is unmatched in the marketplace. We employ a proven methodology that is continually refined and improved by sharing “best practices” developed over the past 30+ years. Our focus has always been to develop and maintain a long-term relationship with our clients. We understand the importance of not disrupting your daily operations so we streamline each phase of our audit process to be as unobtrusive as possible. Our highly experienced team is focused and dedicated to serve your specific audit needs.

Given our singular focus on Occupancy Cost recovery for over 30 years we have had extensive experience working with most of the nation’s largest and most recognizable big box retailers and commercial tenants. Our unique national coverage and depth of our organization has created a model that is specifically suited to serve this class of trade. We do not pretend to represent an offering that is everything for everyone. Not always the case in this industry. All our work is performed internally by OAG Associates. Due to bandwidth limitations with very large multi–location clients it is not uncommon for providers to subcontract portions of the audit to unrelated third party sources to complete the work which can result in inconsistent output. That has never been the case for OAG. Our related experience working with all configurations uniquely qualifies us along with our web-based database technology to provide efficiencies that other firms without this valuable experience and available internal resources cannot.

The recovery audit business began in the early 1970’s when Howard Schultz discovered that many retailers were losing money by not taking advantage of allowances, price concessions, rebates and other incentives provided by vendors. He began manually auditing masses of paper invoices to uncover overcharges, inconsistencies and lost revenues. Soon, many financial executives and former accounts payable managers joined with him, and an innovative industry was born. The advent of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the 1980s sparked an evolution in the industry. As companies began to order from suppliers via computers, auditors began enlisting specialized software programs to analyze invoices and other procurement data for errors, overpayments and under-deductions.

Howard Schultz identified the demand for real estate cost recovery audits and in 1990, Howard invited Jim Callos and Alan Jacobson to initiate the practice of conducting real estate and construction audits on a contingency basis.

Today, the industry faces more evolutionary changes. Rapidly evolving procurement technologies, corporate consolidation, globalization, and exponential increase in the variety, size and speed of electronic transactions, and a dynamic buying environment (defined by fluctuating prices, multiple vendors, myriad tax arrangements and pricing options) are challenging the payables process.

In response to these market changes, Howard Schultz and John Cook of PRG agreed in 2001 to combine their organizations to form PRG-Schultz. The combination reflected the consolidation and globalization trends in the industries served by the firm. The resulting organization provided the scale and strength to lead the evolution and innovation of the industry, with the critical mass to enhance competitive advantages in technology, professionals, data and best practices.

OAG has always aligned itself with the industry leaders in accounts payable audits. As a result, OAG became the national leader in the real estate cost recovery audit industry and our related experience and client list is unparallaled thanks to those alliances. As a result, OAG reached unsurpassed levels of performance serving many of the Fortune 100 companies.

OAG soon realized the limitations of working with accounts payable organizations and currently has no affiliation with any accounts payable company, which allows us to focus on what we do best, audit occupancy costs. We are not an all-services firm who dabbles in every audit area and we don’t claim to be. Many of those firms use accounts payable auditors to audit real estate costs. We continue our practice of only auditing occupancy costs. If you are looking for an occupancy cost audit you should work with an occupancy cost audit firm, whoever they may be. If you are looking for another cost-cutting area we can recommend other firms for those other specialized audits as we do the real estate audits for many other expense reduction and cost cutting firms through our many strategic alliance partners.