Transfer an existing client account to your agency

While onboarding a new client, you may need their previous agency to transfer their existing Ads account(s) to your paying manager account. This process is called Change Who Pays.

This process needs to be initiated by the previous agency, and once it has been initiated you will be notified via both an email and an alert in the "Notifications" sections of your Ads account. The email is sent to all admins for the manager account given by the previous agency, but the request can be actioned by any admin within the same MCC hierarchy.

This article will help you review and approve or deny an incoming Change Who Pays request.

This feature is currently in a beta phase, and therefore not all options listed below are available at this time. The features that are not currently available are:

• Pending transfer notification (step 1b.i). Please use either step 1a. or 1b.ii to navigate to a pending transfer
• Automatic unlinking (step 6c). Please manually unlink/link the client account after the transfer is complete. Please note that the client account will need to be linked to your manager account within 7 days of the transfer, otherwise your ads will stop running.
• Service agreement selection (step 8a). At this time only Master Service Agreements are compatible with this feature. If you need to use a Budget Service Agreement, please contact support to facilitate the transfer.

Instructions

Steps to complete the Change Who Pays

1. Navigate to the pending transfer either via the email or within your Ads manager account:
   1. Email: Click on the View Request button in the email sent by [e-mail] with the subject line “Request to Change Who Pays initiated”.
   2. Ads manager account:
      1. In the “Notifications” section of the menu bar, click View for the "Incoming request to change who pays" alert.
      2. Navigate to Billing > Billing setups, and select the Change who pays requests option in the page menu at the top
2. On this page you can see all of the below information as entered by the previous agency:
   1. Transferred account ID: Ads customer ID of the account to be transferred
   2. Manager account: Manager account ID to transfer this Ads account into
   3. Expected transfer date: Date on which ownership of the account should change
   4. Expiration date: Date by which this request must be actioned, otherwise it will be automatically canceled
   5. Status:
      1. Open: Pending review by your agency
      2. Pending approval: Request has been completed by both agencies and is under review by Google Support
   6. Actions: Either proceed with or decline the request
3. If you do not agree to the transfer, click Decline and enter the reason you are rejecting the request. This reason will be visible to the previous agency.
4. If you agree to the transfer, click Proceed.
5. Select the manager account you would like to designate as the paying manager.
   1. There is a dropdown menu here with all eligible manager account IDs, which are dependent on the account ID given by the previous agency. If you’d like to transfer this client to a different manager account than the one given by the previous agency, you can do so as long as it is within the same manager account tree (if you have multiple manager accounts).
   2. If you do not see the desired manager account as an option, decline the request and share the correct paying manager account ID with the previous agency. The previous agency will need to re-submit the request with the correct ID.
6. Once the manager account is selected, the below options will appear:
   1. Billing setup: You can choose an existing consolidated billing setup to add this account to, or create a new standalone billing setup.
   2. Transfer date: Date on which ownership of the account should change
   3. Do you want to automatically unlink from previous manager account?: If ‘Yes’ is not selected here, the previous agency’s manager account will need to be manually unlinked when ready. You can see more about unlinking accounts here.
7. Click Save and continue.
8. The next page asks for the budget details for the transferred account:
   1. Service agreement: If you need a Service Agreement with specific budget details for this account, select “Budget Service Agreement”. Otherwise, select “Google Ads master service agreement”. See more here.
   2. Budget amount: You can set a specific amount, or have an unlimited budget.
   3. Budget dates: Start and end date of the current budget. The start date should be on or after the Transfer date.
   4. Budget name: Name of the current budget. This name will also appear on this account’s invoices.
   5. Purchase order (optional): If necessary, add a PO number to be displayed on this account’s invoices.
   6. Notes (optional): Any other information you’d like to appear on this account’s invoices
9. Click Submit request.
10. The status of this request will now change to Pending approval.

Once your transfer request is submitted, our Google Support team will review the transfer to ensure there are no issues. If needed, a support agent may contact you with questions regarding this transfer, or they may reject the transfer and ask for it to be re-submitted with updated information. Otherwise, the transfer will be approved within 48 hours.

If you have any questions regarding your transfer or need additional support, please contact us here.

Related links

• Transfer your client account to another agency
• Change the payments profile for your client account