Every lease has three foundational dates that drive rent escalations, renewal notices, and lease liability. Getting them right is essential.

Lease Commencement Date — when the lease becomes binding and non-monetary obligations begin. This is typically the date both parties sign, the effective date, or the date the landlord delivers the premises. Read your lease — it varies.

Rent Commencement Date — when rent begins to accrue. This is often the same as the commencement date, but in leases with significant build-outs (common in restaurant/food-service), it may come weeks or months later.

Lease Expiration Date — calculated from the rent commencement date and the term length. See the lease year section below before calculating.

If you acquired a location from another tenant, your commencement date is the assignment effective date — not the original lease date. Always provide either the assignment effective date or the assignment document itself. This protects you from liability for anything prior to your ownership.

Rent commencement clauses can be layered. A typical example:

"The earlier of: (1) 120 days after the later of tenant's approvals or the commencement date, or (2) the date tenant opens for business."

To solve it: find the later of your approval date and commencement date, add 120 days (condition 1), then compare that to your opening date (condition 2). Whichever is earlier is your rent commencement date.

If your rent commencement falls on any day other than the first of the month, check the lease year definition. Many leases treat that partial first month as a stub period, with the full term starting on the first of the following month.

Example: Rent commencement of September 15 on a 10-year term likely expires September 14 ten years later — not September 15. The lease year definition will tell you which applies.

CakeBot can interpret complex date clauses and calculate results for you — but it has no memory, so you can't just type in a date alone.

The right approach:

CakeBot will return the calculated date and explain its logic. Always verify the result against your lease language.

CakeBot is accessible from the Files tab, the Abstraction tab, or any Location record with an uploaded lease. To confirm it's enabled, go to Settings > CakeBot.