Get started with Budget Pacer

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The first time you open Budget Pacer, a short setup takes you from connecting an ad account to your first tracker. The progress bar at the top shows three steps: Connect, Campaigns and Tracker.

  1. Open Budget Pacer at /pacer. Until setup is finished, Budget Pacer takes you to the setup screens. If you already have a PPC Ad Editor (Studio) account and have not connected an ad account or picked campaigns in Budget Pacer yet, it opens your dashboard instead, with Create your first budget tracker and a New Budget Tracker button. Connect an account from the Accounts page, then build your first tracker.
  2. On First, connect an ad account, click Connect Google Ads or Connect Microsoft Ads and finish the sign-in. Budget Pacer only imports spend data and never edits your account.
  3. On Select Google Ads accounts (or Select Microsoft Ads accounts), tick one or more accounts and click the Link button, for example Link 2 accounts. Accounts under a manager (MCC) account are listed beneath it.
  4. Back on the Connect step, check your linked accounts and click the Continue button, for example Continue with 2 accounts. Budget Pacer starts pulling your campaigns in the background.
  5. On Create your first budget tracker, type a name under Name your tracker, for example Brand Search.
  6. Under Campaigns, click an account in the Accounts column, then click campaigns in the middle column. Your picks appear in the Selected column.
  7. Under Budget, pick the Plan year, choose Annual, Quarterly or Monthly, and type the budget.
  8. Click Create tracker & finish.
  9. On the All set! screen, check the summary and click Open dashboard.

Add accounts from a login you already connected

Back on the Connect step, Connect another Google account adds more accounts. If you connected a Google login before, Budget Pacer first shows Use a saved Google login, with each saved login's email and the date it was connected. Click one to pick accounts from it without signing in to Google again. Click Use a different Google login to sign in with another one, or Cancel to go back. Microsoft Ads works the same way, with Use a saved Microsoft login.

No accounts show after I sign in

On Select Google Ads accounts, the screen can say one of these instead of a list. Click Back to return to the Connect step.

  • No accounts found. That login has no Google Ads or Microsoft Ads accounts it can open. Try a different login.
  • Accounts under this manager could not be loaded. Google did not return the accounts under your manager (MCC) account. Try again shortly.
  • Google temporarily unavailable. The Google connection is down on our side and the team has been alerted. Try again shortly.

Suggested budget during setup

When the campaigns you pick have recent spend, Budget Pacer fills in a suggested budget based on their last 30 days of spend, shown as "Suggested from recent spend". It is only a starting point. Type your real budget over it.

Skip the tracker step for now

On the tracker step, click Skip for now to finish setup without a tracker. The All set! screen then reminds you that you can create a tracker any time from the dashboard with New Budget Tracker.

If campaigns do not appear during setup

Campaigns can take a moment to arrive after you connect. While they load, the Campaigns column says it is pulling campaigns from your ad accounts. If an account shows No campaigns synced for this account yet, click Sync now. If the sync fails, click Retry sync, or pick campaigns later from the dashboard.

Setup used to have separate accounts, budgets and tags steps. Old links to /pacer/setup/accounts, /pacer/setup/budgets and /pacer/setup/tags now open the tracker step at /pacer/setup/tracker.

Still stuck? Contact support.