Automatic payments is a payment setting in Google Ads. Using this setting, you first accrue advertising costs, then have those costs automatically charged to your primary payment method.
If you use automatic payments, you will be charged for your advertising on the first day of every month, or whenever your account reaches a predetermined amount known as your payment threshold – whichever comes first.
Payment threshold
An amount of costs that, when reached, triggers you to be charged for those costs. This amount starts at a set amount which you can find in your billing summary page and will be automatically raised if your costs reach this amount before the end of the monthly billing cycle.
- When your account costs reach the threshold before the month has ended, your threshold is raised. This may happen several times until your account reaches a final threshold. Threshold amounts depend on your account, country and currency.
- The amount that you're charged may be slightly more than the threshold if your account accrues costs very quickly. You can be charged multiple times a month if your account reaches your billing threshold repeatedly over that time.
- You won't be emailed or notified when your payment threshold increases, but you can always find your current threshold by going to your billing summary page. To see what your current threshold is, click the tool icon
and under "Billing", choose Settings. You will land on the Summary page which shows how much costs have accrued since your last payment. Look for your threshold amount under the progress bar.
Based on the frequency of monthly charges, some customers may have an option to increase their payment threshold above the max amount that is set automatically to a higher system recommended amount. This setting will help users that have frequent monthly charges to be charged fewer times a month.
To see if this option has been enabled in your account and make changes to your threshold value, use the following steps:
- Sign into your Google Ads account.
- Click the tools icon
- Under the grey progress bar next to your current spend threshold amount, click Edit threshold.
- You’ll land on the “Settings” page. Under “How you pay” in the Payment account section, you’ll see your current threshold limit
- To see the recommended threshold amount for your account and to change it, click the pencil icon
.
- To set your payment threshold at the recommended amount, click “Use recommended amount”, then click Save.
- You can also set any payment threshold amount up to a recommended value. Once done, click Save.