A Budget That Lasts the Whole Month: Track Your Daily Spend

Most companies set a monthly budget for Google Ads. The campaigns in Google Ads, however, are controlled by a daily budget. When the two do not match, the money runs out a few days before the end of the month or there is money left over.

This matters because the last days of the month are often worth as much as the first. If your ads are not running when a potential customer searches, the enquiry probably goes to someone else. In this post I go through how Google works with the daily budget and how you follow your spend day by day.

My recommendation is that you work out the daily budget from the monthly budget the same way Google does, and that someone compares spend with the plan every day. That way you spot a deviation while there are still days left to correct it.

How Google works with the daily budget

The amount you set on a campaign is called the average daily budget. The word average matters, because Google lets the campaign spend more on days when many people search and less on days when few do.

According to Google's help page on spending limits, two limits apply to most campaigns.

• The daily limit is twice the daily budget. On a single day, the campaign can therefore cost up to two daily budgets.
• The monthly limit is the daily budget multiplied by 30.4. That is the average number of days in a month, calculated as 365 divided by 12.

If costs still go over either limit, you do not pay the difference. Google covers it.

An example with a daily budget of SEK 1 000 shows how the limits fit together.

What applies	Amount
Average daily budget	SEK 1 000
Maximum cost on a single day	SEK 2 000
Maximum cost in a calendar month	SEK 30 400

Work out the daily budget from the monthly budget

Divide the monthly budget by 30.4 and you have the daily budget. It is the same calculation Google makes in the other direction, so the monthly limit lands exactly on your budget.

If you divide by the number of days in the month instead, it comes out slightly wrong. In a month with 31 days the limit ends up below your budget, and in February it ends up above it.

If you have several campaigns, first split the monthly budget between them and then convert each part. If you use a shared budget, do the same calculation for the whole group of campaigns that share it.

Why the money runs out before the end of the month

With the right daily budget, Google stays within the monthly limit. If your ads still stop towards the end of the month, it may be due to one of the following.

• The budget was raised mid-month. When you change the daily budget, Google recalculates the limit for the rest of the month. The new limit becomes what has already been spent plus the new daily budget multiplied by the number of calendar days remaining. Raising the budget to catch up after a slow start can therefore take the month over plan, so that someone ends up pausing the campaigns.
• The account has an account budget. If you pay by invoice, the account may have an account budget with a cap for a given period. According to Google's help page on account budgets, all ads in the account stop when the cap is reached and start again when the next account budget begins.
• The prepayment ran out. If you pay in advance, your ads stop when the balance is used up.
• The daily budgets add up to more than the monthly budget. The sum of the daily budgets multiplied by 30.4 is larger than the budget for the month. Someone then pauses the campaigns when the amount is reached.

The opposite also happens. A campaign with too few searches or bids that are too low does not use its full daily budget, and then there is money left over at the end of the month.

How to follow spend day by day

Google Ads has a budget report for every campaign with an average daily budget. It shows the following.

• The limit for the month.
• The cost so far this month.
• Google's forecast for the whole month.

You find the report by hovering over the budget in the campaigns table and selecting View budget report. According to Google's help page on the budget report, it does not work for Performance Max. There you follow the daily cost in the campaigns table instead.

The report says nothing about your own plan. That is why we also track the pace against the plan with a simple calculation every morning.

1. Write down the monthly budget for each campaign and the number of days in the month.
2. Work out the planned cost so far. That is the monthly budget multiplied by the number of days that have passed, divided by the number of days in the month.
3. Compare it with the actual cost so far.
4. Work out what can be spent per day for the rest of the month. That is the remaining budget divided by the number of days left.
5. Decide in advance how large a deviation is acceptable before anyone acts. One example is 10% either way.

An example: after ten days of a 30-day month, a campaign with a monthly budget of SEK 30 000 has cost SEK 12 500. The planned cost is SEK 10 000, so the campaign is 25% ahead of plan. SEK 17 500 remains for 20 days, which comes to SEK 875 per day.

If you want a signal without opening the account, you can set up an automated rule under Tools and Rules. According to Google's help page on automated rules, a rule can send an email when a condition is met. Rules can also change budgets and bids, but for the budget an email is enough. That way a person still makes the decision.

What I look at first when the pace is off

In the accounts we manage, we compare the daily cost with the month's plan for each campaign. When the pace is off, I go through these questions in order.

1. Has anyone changed the budget or bids? According to Google's help page on budget changes, a new end date also counts as a budget change.
2. Have searches changed? A weekend or an event in your industry can bring more or fewer searches within a few days.
3. Is the money going to the right searches? Costs that rise quickly sometimes come from searches that never lead to business. Then negative keywords help more than a change of budget.
4. Has the bid strategy changed? According to Google, Maximize conversions suits campaigns where the whole budget should be used. More on that choice in the post on bid strategies in Google Ads.

Budget and pace are also among the points we cover when we audit a Google Ads account. Once the cause of a deviation is clear, I let you know, and the decision to change the budget is one you make together with me.

Next step

We run Google Ads with a plan per month and campaign and compare spend with the plan every day. You find out when the pace is off and what is causing it.

How much of this month's budget have your campaigns already used?