If advance payments are agreed, the service charge statement must reach the tenant by the end of the twelfth month after the accounting period ends (§ 556 (3) BGB). Additional claims are then excluded unless you are not responsible for the delay; credits remain payable. Only costs agreed in the tenancy contract and listed in § 2 BetrKV are allocable.
If you account too late, with formal errors or with the wrong items, you lose real money. This article summarises what you need to get right as a landlord when preparing the statement. How to read and check a statement as the recipient is covered in our article on service charges.
The 12-month deadline is a cut-off
The statement must reach the tenant no later than the end of the twelfth month after the end of the accounting period (§ 556 (3) BGB). If, as is common, the period follows the calendar year, that means receipt by the tenant by 31 December of the following year. What counts is receipt, not posting. After that, additional claims are excluded, unless you are not responsible for the delay (for instance because a utility culpably delivered its annual invoice late; you must be able to demonstrate this). The deadline works in one direction only: a credit in the tenant’s favour must still be paid out after it has passed.
What you may pass on and what not
Costs are allocable only if they meet two conditions: they appear in the list of § 2 BetrKV (property tax, water and sewage, heating, waste collection, building cleaning, garden maintenance, lighting, insurance, caretaker and more), and the allocation has been agreed in the tenancy contract. Without such an agreement, the landlord bears the operating costs himself (§ 556 (1) BGB requires an agreement).
Expressly not allocable under § 1 (2) BetrKV are administration costs (including the fee for a rental management service) as well as maintenance and repairs. Repairing the heating system therefore does not belong in the statement, its regular servicing does.
Formal minimum requirements
A proper statement must be intelligible to the tenant without outside help. At a minimum it includes:
- the total costs per cost type for the whole property,
- the allocation key applied: without a different agreement, costs are allocated by floor area, while consumption-based costs follow recorded consumption (§ 556a BGB),
- the resulting tenant’s share, and
- the deduction of advance payments made.
Hiding calculations, merging items or silently changing the key makes the statement contestable. The principle of economic efficiency also applies (§ 556 (3) sentence 1 BGB): you may only pass on costs that an economically minded owner would incur.
Heating costs: their own legal framework
Heating and hot water costs follow the Heating Costs Ordinance: at least 50 and at most 70 percent must be billed by consumption, the rest by area. Unlike general administrative work, the metering service’s costs for recording and apportioning are allocable. Since the switch to remote-readable heating cost meters, the monthly consumption information has been added as an ongoing duty.
Access to documents and tenant objections
On request, the tenant may inspect the documents underlying the statement (§ 556 (4) BGB); agreements to the tenant’s disadvantage are void (§ 556 (5) BGB). If you refuse access, the tenant can withhold the additional payment. Conversely, the tenant has twelve months from receipt of the statement to raise objections. After that, objections he is responsible for delaying are excluded.
Typical landlord mistakes
In practice, four mistakes cost the most money: the missed cut-off deadline, passed-on administration or repair costs, a wrong or changed allocation key, and statements so unclear in form that they fail to meet the deadline at all. Landlords with several units also often underestimate the vacancy question: costs attributable to vacant flats are borne by the owner, not by the remaining tenants.
Handing it over instead of doing the maths yourself
The statement is the most frequent point of dispute between landlords and tenants. It is also the point where professional support pays off first. In our management work in Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region, preparing statements on time and in due form is a core part of rental management; a missed deadline there is simply an avoidable financial loss.
Sources
Editorial responsibility: digo.immo Verwaltung & Invest - certified residential property manager under § 26a WEG (IHK Frankfurt), licence under § 34c GewO. About the certification
This article provides general information only and does not replace individual legal advice. It was created with AI assistance; the legal statements have been checked against the official texts of the law. Legal status: 28/08/2026; laws and case law may change. No warranty is given as to completeness, accuracy or timeliness. When in doubt, please seek qualified advice.