Google Ads and Meta overspend alerts for agencies

Adswave checks your clients' Google Ads and Meta accounts hourly against rules you set. A pacing rule tells you when spend runs ahead of or behind the monthly budget. A metric rule tells you when one of nine metrics moves past your threshold. Every rule reads complete days ending yesterday. Alerts are on every plan, from €19.99 a month.

What an alert rule can be

How a pacing rule decides you are overspending

A pacing rule compares actual spend over its window with the spend the monthly budget calls for over the same days.

expected   = monthly budget / 30.4 * window days
variance % = (actual - expected) / expected * 100

A client on €3,040 a month is expected to spend €100 a day, or €700 over a 7-day window. If the last seven complete days cost €820, the variance is (820 - 700) / 700 = +17.1%. An overspend rule at 15% fires. A rule at 20% does not.

The 30.4 is the constant Google publishes for its own monthly limit:

Your monthly spending limit (30.4 times your average daily budget for most campaigns) in any particular month.

Adswave divides by 30.4 in every month, whatever its length. In a 31-day month, a client spending its budget evenly reads about -1.9%. In a 28-day February the same client reads about +8.6%. A 5% overspend rule therefore fires on evenly paced clients for any window inside February. At 10%, a February rule fires once spend runs about 1.3% above an even split of the month.

Client and ad account rules use the monthly budget entered for each linked ad account in the Client dialog, under Admin, Clients. Each account is measured against its own budget, and an account without one is skipped. A budget carries forward to later months until you change it. A workspace rule reads a separate workspace budget, set month by month, and never fires without one. Put your pacing rules on clients.

Three more behaviours:

• A window with no spend never fires. An idle account and a broken connection look the same.
• Early in a month, the window reaches back into last month. It is still measured against this month's budget.
• A pacing rule does not project month-end spend or know how much of the month remains.

How a metric rule decides

A metric rule compares the last 1, 7, 14 or 30 complete days with the window of the same length just before it. Impressions, clicks, cost, conversions and conversion value are summed per day. CTR, CPC, ROAS and cost per conversion are computed from those sums for each window.

change % = (this window - previous window) / previous window * 100

"CPC, up, 25%, 7 days" fires when the last seven complete days averaged €1.30 a click against €1.00 in the seven before. That is +30%. The rule stays silent when the previous window is zero, or when a ratio cannot be computed, such as CPC with no clicks.

Why variance beats a budget-percentage alert

The usual alternative is a threshold on the running total: tell me when the client has spent 75% of the budget. Adswave does not offer that rule, and the arithmetic shows why.

Take the €3,040 client at €100 a day. On the 10th, daily spend jumps to €150.

• A 75% alert waits for €2,280. Nine days at €100 and ten at €150 pass it on the 19th. By then the client is €500 over pace.
• On the 12th, a pacing rule set to overspend, 10%, 7 days checks the 5th to the 11th. Five days at €100 and two at €150 make €800 against €700 expected, or +14.3%. It fires at €100 over pace, a week sooner.

The 75% alert also fires for a client who is exactly on pace, on the 23rd. It reports a date, not a problem. It never fires for underspend.

Which scope combines Google Ads and Meta

• Whole workspace. One total across every client in the workspace, with Google Ads and Meta combined.
• One client. Each linked ad account is checked on its own. An ad account belongs to one platform, so Google and Meta are not combined at this scope.
• One ad account. Only that account.

One client rule covers all of that client's accounts. Three rules per client fit every plan at its client limit: 15 of 20 on Basic, 36 of 50 on Standard and 105 of 200 on Pro.

How often alerts run and repeat

Rules are evaluated hourly in production. Because every window ends yesterday, a new day enters the rules only after midnight on the server's calendar. The hourly runs in between re-check the same complete days.

A rule fires at most once per target in 24 hours. The target is one ad account, or the workspace total. A condition that stays true alerts again after 24 hours, not every hour. Each run sends one email per rule, listing every account that crossed. An account that crosses in a later run produces another email.

Owners and admins can press Evaluate now to run every active rule at once. It sends no email and uses one analysis run. Its alerts still count toward the 24-hour limit, so a manual test can hold back that rule's email for a day.

Who gets the alert email

Email goes to the organisation's owners and admins who have Alert emails switched on under Settings, Notifications. Members never receive alert emails. A rule can also skip email and stay in the app.

Every fired alert lands in Triggered alerts on the Alerts page, which lists the latest 50. The sidebar shows an unread badge. Everyone sees alerts for the workspaces they can access. Read state is shared, so marking an alert read clears it for the whole organisation.

What overspend alerts do not do

• Not real time. The freshest day a rule reads is yesterday.
• No changes. An alert never pauses a campaign or edits a budget. Adswave never writes to Google Ads or Meta.
• No campaign, ad set or keyword scope. The narrowest is one ad account.
• No Slack, Teams, SMS or webhooks. Alerts reach your team by email and in the app. Nothing goes to clients.
• No absolute amounts, such as "spend above €500".
• No default rules. You create each one.
• One active rule per metric, direction and window in each workspace or client. A second threshold on the same combination is refused.

Suggested first rules

1. Pacing, either, 10%, 7 days, on every client with budgets.
2. CPC, up, 25%, 7 days, per client. It flags an auction that got expensive, which a spend rule can miss.
3. Conversions, down, 30%, 7 days, per client. A broken landing page or conversion tag shows up here.

Which plan includes overspend alerts

Alerts are on every plan: Basic at €19.99, Standard at €47.99 and Pro at €129.99 a month. The plans differ in rules per organisation: 20, 50 and 200. Paused rules count toward the limit. Alerts need an active subscription or trial. If it lapses, rules stop being evaluated.

Compare the plans on pricing, or start a 7-day free trial, no card required.

Read the full alert rule reference, the pacing variance definition, or how to catch an overspend before your client does.

Google's monthly spending limit quoted from Google Ads Help, checked 3 September 2026.