Advertisers that manage multiple accounts sometimes need to make billing changes to many accounts at once. Performing billing actions in bulk saves on the time and effort needed to update individual accounts manually. In this article, we’ll show you how to download, edit, and upload spreadsheets to complete invoice setups and billing transfers for many accounts at once.
Use the instructions below to create new invoice setups in bulk. This is sometimes referred to as a “billing signup” because you are signing up a Google Ads account to use a particular set of billing details.
Before you begin
Bulk billing actions require admin access to a manager account. You'll be able to make edits to all managed accounts that fall under, but not above, the manager account you're signed. Make sure you're signed in at the appropriate level.
First, download the template:
- Sign in to your Google Ads manager account.
- Click Accounts
from the menu on left.
- From the Budgets tab, click the 3-dot icon and select Upload.
- Click View templates to select a predefined spreadsheet.
- Find “New billing signups” and click your preferred file type underneath. A file will download to your computer.
Next, edit the template offline:
- Open the file you downloaded from the “Upload” page.
- Enter information for each account on a new line.
- If needed, enter parameters to apply to the upload.
Template columns & parameters defined
| Customer ID | REQUIRED: Enter customer IDs for individual Google Ads accounts on separate rows. If left blank, the setup for the row will fail. |
| Manager ID | REQUIRED: Enter paying manager ID. If you are using an existing Payments account use the paying manager ID associated with it. If you are creating a new Payments account, use the paying manager ID that should be associated with it. If left blank, the setup for the row will fail. |
| Payments Profile ID | REQUIRED: Enter the profile ID that will be legally responsible for costs generated by the associated Google Ads account. If left blank, the setup for the row will fail. |
| Payments Account ID | OPTIONAL: Use this field to add an account to a consolidated billing invoice. Be sure you enter a 16-digit Payments account ID, which is distinct from the 12-digit Payments profile ID. Find this number by downloading a spreadsheet of all existing Account IDs from your Google Ads manager account or by navigating to Billing & payments section of the Google Ads account, then clicking on Settings. If left blank a new payments account (invoice setup) will be created. |
| Payments Account Name | OPTIONAL: Leave blank if you are adding the account to a consolidated billing invoice. REQUIRED: If you are creating a new invoice setup, enter a name. A new payments account ID will be generated automatically when the invoice setup is created. |
| Currency | REQUIRED: Enter the currency associated with the Google Ads account |
| Budget Amount | REQUIRED: Enter a whole number, without commas. You can also enter “Unlimited” without quotes if you want the budget to be free of spending limits. |
| Start Date | REQUIRED: This is the start date of the account budget. Enter “Now” without quotes to make the budget active as soon as the upload is approved. Otherwise, enter a future date, using the format YYYY-MM-DD. |
| End Date | OPTIONAL: This is the end date for the account budget. Leave blank or enter “None” without quotes for a budget that runs indefinitely, or until spending limit is reached. Otherwise, enter a future date, using the format YYYY-MM-DD. |
| Budget Name | OPTIONAL: Naming your budget may make for easier identification if you need to locate it in your account or invoices. |
| Purchase Order | OPTIONAL: Including a PO number can help you match Google invoices to your in-house accounting systems. This can include numbers as well as letter, but should not have spaces or special characters. |
| Notes | OPTIONAL: Use this field to record notes that might useful for later viewing. This is strictly for your convenience and is not tracked by Google. |
| Cancel | OPTIONAL: Enter “TRUE” without quotes to cancel a previously submitted request. |
Parameters
Note the “Parameters” row, just above the table headers. Parameters allow you to add special instructions to actions prescribed by the upload. It’s important to note that these instructions will apply to all entries in the spreadsheet. When adding parameters, be sure to copy the them exactly as they are below or in the template, including the semi-colon. These are your options:BillingActionType=BillingSignup;- This is the default parameter for adding new invoice setups. Don’t change this, or your upload will fail.ServiceAgreementType=Budget; BudgetApproverEmail=insert email here; BudgetApproverName=insert name here;- These three parameters work together to trigger a new budget service agreement) for each budget in the sheet. Remember to replace “insert email/name here” with theemail and name of the contact that should accept the service agreement. Without these parameters, budgets are attributed to the current Service Agreements on file. Most advertisers shouldn't need to use these advanced options.
Tips:
- Save the edited template with a unique name to help keep track of your bulk upload actions.
- Uploaded spreadsheets should contain no more than 500 rows (including headers and instructions). If you have more than about 475 budgets to add, split them into multiple sheets for a smoother experience.
When you’re finished editing, save and re-upload the template to Google Ads:
- Return to the “Upload” page (instructions above).
- Click Choose file, which will open a window for you to browse your computer files.
- Find and select the edited spreadsheet to upload to Google Ads.
- Under “File selected” you should now see the spreadsheet you created from the template.
Finally, review the updates:
Once you’ve uploaded your file, you’ll see options to Preview, Apply, or Cancel the changes above the budgets table.
- Preview: It’s a good practice to start with a preview to see if there are any errors in your upload. After you click Preview you’ll see a table showing counts for how many changes are requested, how many would be successful, and how many would produce errors if you applied the upload to your account. Click Details for a line by line report for invoice setup.
- Apply: After you’ve previewed the upload results, click Apply to make the changes to your account budgets. You can also apply changes without previewing. When the edit is complete, you see a notice at the bottom of the page. Click Details to get a full report of which budgets were successful changed and which had errors. The “Result” column will explain each error.
Notes:
- There may be errors that did not appear when you used the "Preview" tool.
- Create a new spreadsheet with just the rows that failed, fix the errors, then start a new upload with this new file.
- Cancel: To start over or choose a different file, click Cancel.
Errors
Errors are handled on a per row basis. So if you upload 100 rows and ten have errors, 90 actions will be successful, and you’ll receive 10 errors. You can fix errors by creating a new spreadsheet with only failed rows, with corrected fields.
Common causes for errors
- Missing or incorrect IDs: Each template will require, at minimum, a Google Ads customer ID for each row. When editing budgets, an Account budget ID is also required. Be sure you’ve included these, that they are accurate and correctly formatted. The best way to ensure accuracy is to download data from your account and paste it into the provided templates.
- Incorrectly formatted entries: Pay close attention to the formatting guidance at the top of each row.
- Overlapping change requests: Google Ads will generate an error if budget run dates either conflict with existing budgets (and no parameter is used to auto resolve the conflict), if there’s already an existing change request for a particular budget, or if associated payments accounts are not yet active.
- Permissions: Be sure the user uploading the spreadsheets has an appropriate permission level, as if they were completing the action manually. For example the uploader may need access for creating or editing budgets, or for accessing a payments profile.
