When you're onboarding a new client, you might need their previous agency to transfer their existing Google Ads account(s) to your paying manager account . This transfer of billing responsibility is referred to as a Change Who Pays process.
The previous agency (the current paying manager) must initiate this Change Who Pays request. After they do, you'll receive an email notification and an alert in the "Notifications" section of your Google Ads account. The email notification is sent to all admin users of the manager account specified by the previous agency. Any admin user within that manager account's hierarchy can act on the request.
This article guides you through the steps to review and then approve or deny an incoming Change Who Pays request. If you have any questions regarding your transfer or need additional support, contact Google Ads support .
This feature is currently in a beta phase, and therefore not all options listed below are available at this time. The features that are not currently available are:
- Pending transfer notification (step 1b.i). Please use either step 1a. or 1b.ii to navigate to a pending transfer
- Automatic unlinking (step 6c). Please manually unlink/link the client account after the transfer is complete. Please note that the client account will need to be linked to your manager account within 7 days of the transfer, otherwise your ads will stop running.
- Service agreement selection (step 8a). At this time only Master Service Agreements are compatible with this feature. If you need to use a Budget Service Agreement, please contact support to facilitate the transfer.
- Loi Sapin. If you wish to use a Payments profile on Loi Sapin, please contact support to facilitate the transfer.
Note that if your agency has a special contract setting called Sequential Liability, you can create a new billing setup with Sequential Liability for your new accounts. Learn more about How to create a new billing setup with Sequential Liability .
Instructions
Steps to complete the Change Who Pays
- Navigate to the pending transfer either via the email or within your Ads manager account:
- Email: Select the View Requestbutton in the email sent by ads-noreply@google.com with the subject line “Request to Change Who Pays initiated”.
- Ads manager account:
- In the “Notifications” section of the menu bar, select Viewfor the "Incoming request to change who pays" alert.
- Navigate to Billing> Billing setups, and select the Change who pays requestsoption in the page menu at the top.
- On this page you can view all of the below information as entered by the previous agency:
- Transferred account ID: Ads customer ID of the account to be transferred
- Manager account: Manager account ID to transfer this Ads account into
- Expected transfer date: Date on which ownership of the account should change
- Expiration date: Date by which this request must be actioned, otherwise it will be automatically canceled
- Status:
- Open: Pending review by your agency
- Pending approval: Request has been completed by both agencies and is under review by Google Support
- Notes from requestor: It serves as a communication bridge between the user initiating a billing transfer and the user responsible for approving it.
- Actions: Either proceed with or decline the request
- If you do not agree to the transfer, select Declineand enter the reason you are rejecting the request. This reason will be visible to the previous agency.
- If you agree to the transfer, select Proceed.
- Select the manager account you would like to designate as the paying manager
.
- There is a dropdown menu here with all eligible manager account IDs, which are dependent on the account ID given by the previous agency. If you’d like to transfer this client to a different manager account than the one given by the previous agency, you can do so as long as it is within the same manager account tree (if you have multiple manager accounts).
- If you do not have the desired manager account as an option, decline the request and share the correct paying manager account ID with the previous agency. The previous agency will need to re-submit the request with the correct ID.
- After the manager account is selected, the below options will appear:
- Billing setup: You can choose an existing consolidated billing setup to add this account to, or create a new standalone billing setup.
- Transfer date: Date on which ownership of the account should change.
- Select Save and continue.
- The next page asks for the budget details for the transferred account:
- Service agreement: If you need a Service Agreement with specific budget details for this account, select “Budget Service Agreement”. Otherwise, select “Google Ads master service agreement”. Learn more About Service Agreements .
- Budget amount: You can set a specific amount, or have an unlimited budget.
- Budget dates: Start and end date of the current budget. The start date should be on or after the Transfer date.
- Budget name: Name of the current budget. This name will also appear on this account’s invoices.
- Purchase order (optional): If necessary, add a PO number to be displayed on this account’s invoices.
- Notes (optional): Any other information you’d like to appear on this account’s invoices
- Select Submit request.
- The status of this request will now change to Pending approval.
Once your transfer request is submitted, our Google Support team will review the transfer to ensure there are no issues. If needed, a support agent may contact you with questions regarding this transfer, or they may reject the transfer and ask for it to be re-submitted with updated information. Otherwise, the transfer will be approved within 48 hours.
