Do I need an auditor for my parking operation? 

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We have just returned from the 2025 NPA convention, where TPN was asked to speak on the topic of Auditing.  The central question was, “Are audits still relevant as we move from this cash world to a more digital transaction world?” In short, we made the case that regular and thorough audits are indeed necessary for healthy operations. When TPN performs an audit, which is really an operational and financial review, we confirm actual revenue and quantify potential revenue. While the digitization of the parking industry has changed the way we do business, it hasn’t changed what we do. Similarly, the digitization has not removed the need for regular audits; it has simply changed what auditors analyze. Audits are no longer about just catching theft. They’re about safeguarding digital revenue streams, holding vendors accountable, and ensuring every dollar makes it to your bottom line. 

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A personal note: the word audit is just so harsh and scary. I mean, how many of you rejoice when your auditor calls? TPN doesn’t like that stigma and genuinely wants to help the industry, not catch it messing up. Therefore, we are intentionally setting aside the word 'audit' and using instead a more accurate and compassionate term, 'financial & operational review,' to describe the expertise we offer. 

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Mountains of Coins, Minimal Controls 

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The transient parking business was almost entirely cash-based until about 2005. By 2010, we were still over 70% cash, but we then began a slow shift toward credit card usage, which became the primary payment method around 2017. During this time, if you were a parking manager of a municipality, university, airport, or parking company, you probably had 10 to 100 million dollars each year spread all over a city in dimes, quarters, and dollar bills, collected by low-paid employees with parking equipment that did not really do the job. Even the larger monthly parking contracts were typically paid by cash or check, and were regularly hand-delivered to each individual parking location. For decades, a significant amount of cash and coins circulated. 

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To add to the busyness of the manager’s job, there were only 2, maybe 3, monthly parking A/R systems that were electronic before 2020. PARIS was the only complete Monthly Parking A/R system, and most of its users used only the non-integrated version. With all the cash flow and limited accounts receivable systems to track it, the environment was always ripe for theft. Theft was actually expected and hampered only by the efforts of the location managers. So, when TPN was hired, there was always an expectation that we would find some level of cash missing. Thankfully, that was also always easy for us to identify!  Interestingly, cash theft was never our largest finding.  The number one revenue loss was the monthly parking A/R contracts and billing, which no one really wanted to talk about it because that leads right back to financial management issues.   

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Money in the Till 

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Unfortunately, traditional audits have become so closely associated with theft that, as parking has moved into a more digital world, people believe there is no longer a need to audit. We are often asked, “With no cash, what is there to audit?” Yesterday’s audits caught thieves with their hands in the till. Today’s audits catch the dollars that never make it into the till at all. Back in 2015, the auditing checklist consisted of a handful of components; today, our report encompasses more than 90 elements. One of our current industry myths is that in a fully digital world, there is no need for traditional parking audits.  

 

The amount of revenue not being collected or accounted for has moved to an electronic world that is much more difficult to manage.  Up to the last few years, most of the monthly, transient, and validation revenue was collected and managed by the local team of parking management staff.  Today, with e-commerce, your parking revenue can be collected by many e-commerce companies that may or may not be integrated with you PARCS and sometime after the end of the month provide you with a separate excel spreadsheet that requires a lot of management time that your system does not have to properly account for revenue collected by a different merchant of record that has many reasons for possibly being inaccurate information.  Additionally, parking rates charged through e-commerce providers may not be managed by the parking management team and may be entirely under the control of an off-site provider. As a result, a significant portion of your revenue may be delayed to your accounts, reported in a platform that does not integrate with yours, and made up of rates that you do not set. In addition to the management headache third-party vendors can introduce to an operation, we also see thousands of dollars of revenue that is neglected and not collected. E-commerce alone is a compelling reason to hire a parking expert, conduct an audit, and receive expert management tips. 

 

In TPN’s experience, the amount of revenue that is not being collected in this new digital age far exceeds the theft numbers we saw in the past.  Up until recently, monthly parking A/R was the primary financial review finding, followed by validation billing and collections, transient revenue cash, and errors in the PARCS system, software, or setup. However, e-commerce has now taken the grand prize for failing to capture revenue. In a financial review, TPN analyzes more than ten components of e-commerce management since it has proven to be the most unruly and bottomless revenue stream to date.

  

Cash may be gone, but revenue loss is alive and well. The greatest financial risks now hide in e-commerce feeds, third-party rate structures, and disconnected systems. If you’re not auditing, you’re bleeding. The question isn’t whether audits are relevant—it’s whether you can afford to ignore them.