When you choose to run ads on Facebook, you will accrue ad costs in small fractions rather than one lump sum.
The payment budget is the total amount of money you want to spend on showing people your ads, over the time period you’ve set them to run.
Whereas the payment threshold is an amount that you can spend on ads before Facebook charges you. Whenever your ad costs reach your payment threshold amount, an invoice will be sent to you for that amount until it ultimately stops once the budget is exhausted.
When you first start advertising on Facebook, your payment threshold is automatically set to a small amount regardless of what your ad budget is. As you make successful payments, the payment threshold may then be raised until your account reaches the total ad budget and the campaign stops.
You can think of your payment threshold as a way to build up a good payment history with Facebook.
Depending on what your payment threshold is and how much money you’re spending on ads, this is why you may be charged multiple times in a given month even if you’re running just one ad.
Check your payment threshold
You can follow these steps to check your payment threshold:
- Login to your Business Manager and select ‘Ads Manager’
- Click on the three lines in the top left-hand corner as per below. Then select ‘Billing’ in the drop-down under ‘Manage Business’.
- In the top right-hand corner, click on ‘Payment Settings’.
- You will then be redirected to the Payment Settings page, where you can view your monthly billing date and view/edit your payment threshold.
On your monthly bill date, Facebook will automatically charge you for any leftover costs for the ad to run.
For example, say you run your first ad campaign with an ad budget of $150.00 for 1 month. You first receive an invoice within a few days for $25.00. As the ad campaign continues to run, you subsequently receive an invoice for another $25.00, then for $35.00 and another for $45.00 – all before your first billing date.
By the time of your actual billing date, you will have been invoiced and paid a total of $130.00 and there is $20.00 in leftover charges for the ad run. On your billing date, you will be invoiced this leftover amount owing.