With automatic payments, we charge you whenever your account reaches a certain amount, known as your payment threshold, or exactly the same day of the month as your last automatic charge -- whichever comes first. Keep in mind: If your previous payment fell on the 29th, 30th or 31st of the month, then your next month's automatic payment may occur sooner to allow for shorter months.
Your payment threshold might rise if you tend to reach that limit before your next automatic charge. For example, if your threshold is $50 and you reach that amount multiple times, the threshold might raise to $200 or more.
Find your account's payment threshold
You can find your account's payment threshold by following these steps:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Billing icon
.
- Click Summary.
- Under the grey progress bar you'll find your threshold and the amount that has been reached.
Set a monthly spend limit across all campaigns
Now you can set a single account-level monthly spend limit to control costs across all your campaigns (rather than set a budget at the individual campaign level). A monthly spend limit can be set and edited on any day of the month. Your campaigns will stop running as soon as the total spend reaches the limit, and the amount of the monthly spend limit will then reset automatically on the first day of the next month.
The total spend is the cost of running your campaigns including all payments made and credits applied other than tax (which may not apply in your country).
Note that this setting will not affect your automatic payment charges, so we will charge you whenever your account reaches your payment threshold, or exactly the same day of the month as your last automatic charge
Because campaign reporting isn’t real-time, you may go over your spend limit the first time you set it, or whenever you lower it. If that happens, you’ll need to pay the excess.
Use the following steps to set a monthly spend limit:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Billing icon
- Click Summary.
- Under “Monthly spend limit” click Set spending limit, and click On.
- Enter your desired monthly spend limit. Note that taxes if applicable in your country aren’t included in the monthly spend limit calculation.
- Click Save.
Change how often you're charged
If you'd like to be charged automatically in larger increments or less frequently, here's what you can do:
- Make a payment to cover a longer period of time.
Making a manual payment helps control the timing of your next automatic charge. If you make a large enough payment, it can cover your costs for a longer amount of time. See the following example:
This video will explain how you can change how often you’re charged for your Google Ads.
Let's say you have a billing threshold of $500, and you've accrued $400 in advertising costs. If you make a manual payment of $1,000, this means you'll have an extra $600 in your account and that you can accrue $600 in costs before you owe anything and can be automatically charged again on the same date as last month's automatic charge. If you make a manual payment of $1,000, this means you'll have an extra $600 in your account and that you can accrue $600 in costs before any new costs will be applied to your next automatic charge.
Keep in mind: If you owe any costs at all, you'll still be charged on the same date each month as your last automatic payment, even if you haven't reached your threshold yet.
- Contact us to increase your threshold.
You can also contact us to request an increase for your payment threshold. If your account meets our requirements for spending, we might be able to do this for you. We'll contact you after our finance team reviews your application, which can take one week to process. If you're approved, you'll be billed every month on the same date as your last automatic charge or when your costs reach your new payment threshold, whichever comes first.
