This article was previously titled 'Smart Budgets Explained'. We added some more automations and renamed “Smart Budgets” to Budget Automation better to reflect the powerful automation tools available.
What is Budget Automation?
Budget Automation is a cohesive suite of tools designed to help you manage ad spend more efficiently across multiple campaigns and platforms. Instead of juggling spreadsheets and checking/setting budgets manually, Adpulse can automatically pace, adjust, and safeguard your campaigns based on your chosen rules.
These automations give you greater control, prevent overspend, and reduce the time spent monitoring budgets daily.
The available Budget Automation settings are:
Adjusts budgets up and down each day
AutoPacing Limit *NEW*
Puts upper limits on adjustments made by AutoPacing
Prevents budget overspending
Pauses campaigns when a budget ends, for example, sale periods
Daily Spend Limit *NEW*
Set daily spending limits
Carry across underspend or overspend between periods.
AutoPacing
Dynamically adjust daily budgets to keep spend on track.
AutoPacing smooths out your daily spend by adjusting campaign budgets based on pacing. If you're under or overspending, Adpulse will automatically increase or decrease daily budgets to help you hit your overall budget target by the end of the period and keep spend consistent throughout the month.
When AutoPacing is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable AutoPacing:
Navigate to the Budget Settings by clicking on a budget name
Under 'Budget Automation', tick the checkbox next to 'AutoPacing'
You will be prompted to select a contact; this is to notify you should AutoPacing fail or any unusually large adjustments are made
Save the budget
You might be presented with a modal showing you the changes to the daily budgets that AutoPacing would make upon saving
AutoPacing Limit
Set upper limits on adjustments made by AutoPacing.
The AutoPacing Limit prevents AutoPacing from setting overly large budgets when a budget is heavily underpacing. It sets a ceiling on how high AutoPacing is allowed to raise daily budgets, based on a multiplier of your ideal daily spend (calculated at the start of the budget period or after a budget update).
The default multiplier is 5x, but you can adjust (or even remove) this to help manage risk while still giving automation room to work.
For example, if you start a 30 day month with a $3,000 budget, the default AutoPacing Limit for the month is calculated as ($3,000 budget / 30 days) x (5 multiple) = $500. This means that AutoPacing will not be able to increase your budget to more than $500/day at any stage through the month, even if you are heaviliy underpacing.
Some examples where we have seen where the AutoPacing Limit save the day:
On the last day of a 30 day month, your month's budget is $3,000 but spend to date is only $1,000. Without the limit, AutoPacing would set today's budget to $2,000 to try and spend the remaining budget before the end date. With the limit setto 5x, AutoPacing will set the budget at $500.
A new budget of $3,000 is being created on day 27 of the month, but you forget to click the pro-rata box when setting up the budget, so Adpulse thinks you are trying to spend the full $3,000 before the budget's end date. Without AutoPacing Limit engaged, today's budget would be set to $3,000/4 = $750. With the limit engaged at 5x, the daily budget would be set to $500.
The AutoPacing Limit is enabled by default at 5x when you enable AutoPacing
When the AutoPacing Limit is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable AutoPacing Limit:
Navigate to the Budget Settings by clicking on a budget name
Under 'Budget Automation', expand the 'Advanced Settings' section
Tick the checkbox next to 'AutoPacing Limit'
You will be prompted to select a contact; this is to notify you should AutoPacing fail
Save the budget
AutoProtect
Automatically pause campaigns when your budget exceeds a defined threshold.
AutoProtect monitors your actual spend against your target budget, and once your spend hits your preset threshold, Adpulse automatically pauses campaigns in this budget group, preventing further overspend.
You can customise the spend threshold to suit your goals.
Budget data is checked hourly, so AutoProtect will pause within one hour of hitting the threshold.
When AutoProtect is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable AutoProtect:
Navigate to the Budget Settings by clicking on a budget name
Under 'Budget Automation', tick the checkbox next to 'AutoProtect'
Enter a percentage as a threshold (105% = 5% greater than the target)
You will be prompted to select a contact; this is to notify you should AutoPacing fail
Save the budget
AutoPause
Pause campaigns when there’s no current schedule.
When a budget has no current schedule (e.g. no schedule exists for a given period of time), AutoPause automatically pauses the associated campaigns. This ensures your ads don’t run outside of intended date ranges or windows.
Campaigns are resumed when the schedule becomes active again.
Example:
AutoPause would pause all the campaigns within this budget when there is no current schedule. In this example, it would pause from 2025-01-12 to 2025-02-01 and then reenable the campaigns on 2025-02-01.
When AutoPause is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable AutoPause:
Navigate to the Budget Settings by clicking on a budget name
Under 'Budget Automation', expand the 'Advanced Settings' section
Tick the checkbox next to 'AutoPause'
You will be prompted to select a contact; this is to notify you should AutoPacing fail
Save the budget
Daily Spend Limit
Stop runaway spend, fast.
This feature checks today’s spend every hour and compares it to your nominated daily limit. If the limit is exceeded, all campaigns in that budget group are automatically paused. Then, the next day, campaigns are re-enabled and spend tracking resumes.
The Daily Spend Limit is your emergency brake - ideal for catching unexpected spikes or tracking errors before they snowball.
When the Daily Spend Limit is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable Daily Spend Limit:
Navigate to the Budget Settings by clicking on a budget name
Under 'Budget Automation', expand the 'Advanced Settings' section
Tick the checkbox next to 'Daily Spend Limit'
You will be prompted to select a contact; this is to notify you should AutoPacing fail
Save the budget
Rollovers
Carry over underspend or overspend between periods.
Instead of starting each new period from scratch, Rollovers let you carry the previous period’s budget variance forward. If you underspend, the leftover amount is added to the new period. If you overspend, the overage is deducted.
Perfect for smoothing out spend across irregular months or managing dynamic performance.
Enabling Rollovers is not in the Budget Automation section, as it can be enabled/disabled per Budget Schedule. As such, is it a setting when you create a new Budget Schedule
When a Rollover is enabled, a 
icon will appear next to the budget name on the Budgets Dashboard
To enable Rollovers:
Create a new, or edit a Budget Schedule, and you will see the option to select a Rollover Strategy
The following Rollover strategies are available:
No rollover: only the amount you manually specify will be added to the budget target, no automatic rollovers will be applied.
All unspent/overspent budget: the difference between the budget target and the actual spend from the previous period will be added as the rollover amount to the current budget.
Up to a maximum amount: as for all unspent/overspent budget but only up to a maximum limit
Up to a maximum percentage of the target: as for all unspent/overspent budget but only up to the specified percentage