Advertisers who manage Google Ads accounts on monthly invoicing sometimes need to make changes to the billing settings for those accounts. When you request a "change who pays" or adjust the details of an invoice setup, this is called a billing transfer. If you manage many accounts, performing each request individually can be very time consuming. This article will walk you through how to save time by submitting billing transfers in bulk.
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, the manager account you're signed into. It is important to make sure you're signed in at the appropriate level.
First, download your current billing data:
- Sign in to your Google Ads manager account.
- Click Accounts
from the menu on left, then select the Budgets tab.
- Click the 3-dot icon and select Download all budgets.
- A file will download to your computer.
Next, download the template:
- From the "Accounts" page, click the 3-dot icon and select Upload.
- Click View templates to select a predefined spreadsheet.
- Find “Billing transfers” and click your preferred file type underneath.
- A file will download to your computer.
Then, edit the template offline:
- Open the template file you downloaded from the “Upload” page.
- Open the file(s) containing your existing billing data.
- Copy the Customer ID and Currency columns and paste them into the corresponding columns in the Billing transfers template.
- Enter the relevant information for the remaining columns.
- If necessary, add parameters to the row just above the data table, marked "Parameters."
Use the information below to understand what to enter for each column, and how to use parameters.
Template columns & parameters defined
| Customer ID | REQUIRED: Enter the customer ID(s) 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. |
| Requested Transfer Date | REQUIRED: This is the date the change will go into effect for the account. Enter “Now” without quotes for the change to be applied as soon as the upload is approved. Otherwise, enter a future date using the format YYYY-MM-DD. Note: “Now” cannot be used when the new paying manager is outside of the current manager hierarchy. A future date should be used instead. |
| Payments Profile ID |
REQUIRED: Enter the 12-digit payments 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. Note that there are 2 uses for this column:
|
| Payments Account ID |
OPTIONAL: Leave blank if you wish to create a new invoice setup. A payments account ID will be generated after the new invoice setup is created. REQUIRED: If you are adding the account to an existing invoice setup. That existing invoice setup will have a 16-digit Payments account ID that needs to be added into this column. |
| Payments Account Name |
OPTIONAL: Leave blank if you are adding the account to an existing invoice setup. REQUIRED: If you are creating a new invoice setup. |
| 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: Enter the same date as your requested transfer date. This date will be the start of your account budget. |
| End Date | REQUIRED: Enter a future date, using the format YYYY-MM-DD. For a budget that runs indefinitely, or until spending limit is reached, enter “None” without quotes. |
| 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. |
| 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=BillingTransfer;- This is the default parameter for billing transfers. Don’t change this, or your upload will fail.AutoFixBudgetOverlap=True;- Add this to the parameters line to automatically resolve budgets with conflicting dates. When you use this, the existing budget will be cancelled and the new one scheduled.ServiceAgreementType=Budget; BudgetApproverEmail=insert email here; BudgetApproverName=insert name here;- These 3 parameters work together to trigger a new budget service agreement for each budget in the sheet. Remember to replace “insert email/name here” with the email 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 you 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 of each transfer.
- 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'll see a notice at the bottom of the page. Click Details to get a full report of which budgets were successfully changed and which ones had errors. The “Result” column will explain each error.
Note2:
- 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 10 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, after correcting the 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.
