Adds the monthly per-campaign budget cap Google Ads doesn't have: label a campaign 'budget::1500' and it is paused once month-to-date spend hits 1500, then re-enabled automatically when the new month starts.
by Victor Kaugesaar & Frederic Harnois (concept), Chiliad (rewrite)·github.com/kaugesaar/adwords-scripts
One table of every campaign's bidding strategy with the two flags that matter: Manual CPC campaigns with enough volume for Smart Bidding, and target-based campaigns too data-starved to learn.
Finds the reallocation hiding in plain sight: efficient campaigns losing volume to budget caps, idle budgets that could fund them, and full budgets funding poor CPAs.
Runs campaigns only inside their date windows — Black Friday starts at 00:00 without anyone staying up, sales end exactly on time, weekend campaigns run only on weekends.
Compares yesterday's average CPC per campaign against its 30-day baseline and alerts on spikes — the earliest visible symptom of a new competitor, broad-match drift, or a bid change gone wrong.
Compares actual spend against your daily budget settings over 1, 7 and 28 days and alerts by email + Google Sheet when Google overdelivers beyond your thresholds.
Compares actual daily spend against the expected pace based on time of day. Logs over- and under-pacing campaigns and can auto-pause overspenders to protect your budget.
Monthly Budget Cap enforces a hard month-to-date spend limit per campaign using labels. Label any campaign 'budget::<amount>' (in account currency) and the script pauses it the hour its month-to-date cost reaches that amount, tagging it with a marker label. On the first run of a new month spend resets, so every campaign the script paused is re-enabled and the marker removed. Campaigns you paused yourself are never touched.
| Variable | Default |
|---|---|
LABEL_PREFIX | budget:: |
PAUSED_MARKER_LABEL | Monthly cap: paused |
AUTO_RESUME | true |
EMAIL_ADDRESS | (empty) |
3 campaign(s) have a monthly cap label. [OK] Brand — Exact - spent 412.18 of 1500 (27%) [OK] Generic — Broad - spent 1289.40 of 2000 (64%) === Monthly Budget Cap === Paused this run: 1 Resumed this run: 0 [PAUSED] Competitor — Phrase - spent 501.63 of 500 cap Email sent to you@example.com
Spend is checked on each run, so with an hourly schedule a campaign can overshoot its cap by up to roughly one hour of spend. The cap compares against Google Ads reported cost for THIS_MONTH in the account time zone. Concept popularized by open-source scripts from Victor Kaugesaar and Frederic Harnois (MIT); rewritten for GAQL and Performance Max support.