Budgets and alerts

This page is for the marketer. It covers:

• monthly plans: what you mean to spend on an ad account in a month;
• pacing: how the month's spend stands against that plan;
• alert rules: lines you draw on your own figures. When one is crossed the server tells you, and does nothing else.

Two things to keep in mind

A plan limits nothing. An alert rule only notifies: it never pauses an ad and never changes a budget. The limits that do refuse a change are the administrator's: see Limits and switches.

All of it works for a user without write access and on a read-only server, because none of it changes anything on a platform.

Set a monthly plan

A plan is your own figure for one ad account, in that account's own currency. It can hold for one month, or for every month that has no plan of its own.

Ask the AI client:

Our plan for the Meta ad account is 3,000 a month.

For October only, plan 5,000 on the Google Ads account 123-456-7890.

The AI client shows you a preview first and saves the plan when you agree. It is told to use the number you give, never one it worked out from the budgets it sees.

Or set it yourself:

1. Open Alerts.
2. Under Monthly plans, choose the platform in Ad account on: Meta Ads, Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads.
3. Type the Ad account id.
4. In Month, leave every, or type one month as 2026-10.
5. Type the amount in Plan for the month.
6. Press Save this plan.

The account is looked up on your own connection, which is where its name and its currency come from. So the platform has to be connected, and the account has to be one you can read.

To remove a plan, press Remove beside it, or ask the AI client to remove it.

What a plan is not

A plan is a note on this server. No platform is told about it, no budget is changed, and nothing is ever refused because of it. Only two things read it: the budget overview and the "month running over its plan" alert rule, both below.

See how the month is going

How is this month's ad spend going against our plan?

Are we on pace on LinkedIn Ads this month?

For each ad account the answer gives:

• the plan;
• the spend of the month so far;
• the daily budgets that are live now;
• where the month is projected to end;
• a word for the pace.

Pace	What it means
Ahead	The projection is more than 10% above the plan.
Behind	The projection is more than 10% below the plan.
On pace	In between.
Too early	Fewer than three days of the month have passed, so no projection is made.
No plan	The account has no plan for that month.

For a month that has ended, the words say whether it finished over, under or on the plan.

With no account named, the answer covers the ad accounts that have a plan for the month. With no plan at all, it reads the first ad account of each platform.

How the projection is worked out

The projection and the pace word are the server's own arithmetic. They are not the platform's forecast, and the answer says so.

• The projection is the spend so far, divided by the days of the month that have passed, times the days in the month. Days are counted in UTC. Today's spend reaches every platform's report late, so the projection reads a little low.
• A second figure takes the spend so far and adds the live daily budgets for each day left in the month. It is what the month comes to if the budgets stay as they are and are spent in full. A platform may spend more than a daily budget on a single day. A lifetime or total budget is not in this figure.

Money is per currency here too. A plan and its spend are in the ad account's own currency, totals are given for each currency alone, and nothing is converted. An account that could not be read is listed as skipped, with the reason, and is in no total.

Alert rules

A rule watches one figure of one account, on your own connection, and sends you a notification when it crosses the line you set.

A rule only tells you

A rule never pauses an ad, never changes a budget and never changes a status. It has no way to. What to do about an alert is your decision, made through the AI client or on the platform.

There are six kinds of rule, and no others. The name is what the Alerts page shows.

Rule	Tells you when	For	Checked
Cost per lead above	The cost per lead across the days you chose is above your amount.	Meta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads	Once a day
Spend with no leads	The account spent across those days and brought no lead at all. You may give an amount of spend to let pass.	Meta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads	Once a day
An ad rejected in review	The platform's review rejected an ad.	Meta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads	Every 3 hours
Month running over its plan	The month projects to end over your plan by more than a margin. The margin is 10% unless you give another.	Meta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads	Once a day
Followers falling	Followers fell by more than a percent across the days you chose. The percent is 5 unless you give another.	Facebook Page, Instagram account, LinkedIn Page	Once a day
A spike in comments	The new comments on the account's recent posts within a day are over your number.	Facebook Page, Instagram account, LinkedIn Page	Every 4 hours

The days a rule looks across are 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 whole days ending yesterday. Cost per lead and followers start at 7 days, spend with no leads at 3.

Add a rule

Ask the AI client in your own words:

Tell me if the cost per lead on our Meta ad account goes above 40 over a week.

Warn me when an ad is rejected on LinkedIn Ads.

Let me know if comments on our Facebook Page spike: more than 50 new ones in a day.

The AI client shows you what the rule would watch, how often it is checked and where the alert would arrive. It saves the rule when you agree.

Or add it yourself:

1. Open Alerts.
2. Under Add a rule, choose the kind in Tell me when. The line below says what it watches and how often it is checked.
3. Choose the platform in On, and type the account's id.
4. Type the Threshold, when the kind takes one.
5. Choose Across how many days, when the kind takes it.
6. Press Add this rule, and confirm.

You can have one rule of each kind on an account. Setting it again changes it and starts it over. One person may have 25 rules.

What each kind needs

• Money is in the account's own currency. The currency is kept with the rule. If the account later reports in another currency, the rule is not judged.
• On Google Ads, "lead" means a conversion. Google Ads reports conversions where the others report leads, so the two lead rules count conversions there. The preview and the alert say so.
• Month running over its plan needs a plan. Without one for the month there is nothing to compare with, and the rule says so until you set one. It is also not judged in the first three days of a month.
• Followers falling needs the account watched. The rule reads the follower counts the server kept day by day, and asks the platform nothing. Add the account on the History page first, or the rule is refused. History also has to be switched on by an administrator, or no new day is kept: see Insights and History and retention.
• A spike in comments is a count. The server does not read what the comments say and cannot judge whether they are friendly. There is no rule for "negative comments". When the rule tells you, ask the AI client to read the new comments with you: see Comments. The first check only takes a count to compare the next one with.

When a rule tells you

You are told once when the line is crossed. You are told again only after a later check has found the figure back on the right side and it is then crossed again. The rule for rejected ads also tells you about an ad it had not seen rejected before, and names only the new ones.

The alert is a notification. It is on the Notifications page, and the AI client can read it. It also goes wherever your installation delivers notifications: to the installation's webhook, and by mail to the address you saved on Notifications, when an administrator has set those up. See Notifications.

The alert says it is your own rule, worked out by the server's arithmetic, and that nothing was paused or changed.

The Alerts page shows each rule's state:

State	What it means
Crossed	You were told, and no check has found it back on the right side since.
Clear	The last check found nothing to tell.
Not checked yet	The rule is new.
Cannot be checked	The last check failed. The reason is under the rule.
Off	The rule is kept and not checked.

Under Last check the page shows when the rule was last checked and what the check saw.

When a rule cannot be checked

A rule is checked as you, on your own connection, and everything that would stop you reading the figure yourself stops the rule: a connection that ended, an administrator's switch that went off, a permission taken away, an ad account no longer allowed.

You are told once that the rule cannot be checked, not at every try. The server keeps trying, less and less often, up to once a day. When the cause is gone the rule works again by itself.

Disconnecting a platform on its connection page deletes your rules that read that platform.

Remove a rule

Press Remove beside the rule on Alerts, or ask the AI client to remove it. Nothing on any platform changes.

To keep a rule and stop checking it for a while, ask the AI client to switch it off.