For example you may have a 1st Jan – 31st Dec lease but payment dates on 1st April and 1st October. This provides a situation whereby some of the payment is in advance and some in arrears, it becomes incredibly difficult to deal with cashflow and basic service charge accountancy.
If you encounter this in a lease the easiest way to deal with it is to look for a provision that allows you to amend either the financial year or the payment dates. If you have this ability you can align the two to make things vastly more manageable for yourself and easier to understand for the leaseholders.
If the lease does not provide the relevant flexibility then (without discussing any costly legal remedies) your only option is to manage the situation. You should be upfront with leaseholders about the conflict with the dates and explain the issues this creates. Knowledge and understanding is power here, if everyone has clarity then the problem can be planned for and worked around. Unfortunately this means running the service charge in a half advance, half arrears cycle.
Whatever you do, do not just change the dates if the lease doesn’t say you can!