# Check Google Ads budget pacing mid-month

> Tier: recipe. Operating recipe: real tool sequence, core rules, known traps.

Spend so far against the month's intention, per budget object, shared budgets read as the objects they are.

**Intent.** Whether spend will land on target, campaign by campaign, with shared budgets untangled.

## When to use

- Mid-month, every month.
- Before anyone promises the client a number.

## When not to use

- Day 1 to 3 of the month: pacing math on two days is astrology.

## Sources

Required: Google Ads

## Preconditions

- The account is ticked in the dashboard, confirmed via list_accounts.

## Inputs

- `window`: Analysis window. Default: last 30 days.

## Procedure

1. Pull budget objects: amounts, delivery method, what shares them. — tools: `google_ads_get_budgets`
2. Pull month-to-date spend per campaign and compute run rates. — tools: `google_ads_get_insights`

## Decision rules

- **When** Run rate lands the month above 110% of intention → **conclude** Flag now with the daily overage: month-end surprises are mid-month findings ignored.
- **When** A shared budget serves campaigns with different priorities → **conclude** The pacing lever is the budget object, not any single campaign: say which campaigns move together.

## Evidence requirements

- Every figure carries its account, metric and window.
- Anything below a readable sample size is reported as unjudged, not as zero.

## Human approval boundary

- The readout changes nothing. Any change it motivates goes through Safe Writes: preview, human confirmation, then apply.

## Failure modes

- Google can spend up to 2x daily budget on any given day: daily overshoots are normal, monthly ones are not.

## Output

- **Readout**: The figures, with windows and accounts named.
- **Flags**: What deserves a deeper skill or a human decision.

## Related

- Skill: [budget-reallocation](https://www.getmcpads.com/skills/budget-reallocation.md)