Charges don't happen once a month or at the end of the month. They happen throughout the month, and are based primarily on thresholds—or the set amount of costs that your account reaches. This amount triggers a charge, so it means you might be charged more than once in a month.

For example, if your threshold is $50, you'll be charged every time that your costs reach $50. So if your costs total $150 in a month, you'll be charged $50 three times (3 x 50 = 150).

This rarely happens, but if you see two identical charges from Google Ads on your credit card or bank statement, there might be two reasons:

• Authorization request: This is a request between our billing system and the bank that issued your credit card. It happens nearly every time a payment is made, and the request appears as a pending amount that's identical to an already processed charge. These requests normally disappear within several days, although this can vary by bank.
• Double charge: An error can cause a double charge, which means your account is billed twice for the same amount, and neither charge is marked as pending on your statement.

If your bank statement shows a double charge, or if it shows an authorization request that doesn't go away on its own, contact your bank for help.

Be sure to review your outstanding balance by clicking the gear icon then Billing & payments. See if both payments are there and the balance is correct. If they are, there's no need to contact Google.

Internet search traffic fluctuates from day to day. To make up for these fluctuations and to ensure that your campaigns reach their potential, Google may allow up to 2x more interactions in one day than your daily budget specifies. We call this overdelivery.

However, our system makes sure that in a given billing period, you're never charged more than the number of days in that billing period multiplied by your daily budget.

For example, if you budget US$10 per day, and you're charged for a 30-day billing period, the maximum you would pay is US$300.

If Google overdelivers your ads and you accrue more costs in a billing period than your budget allows, a credit will automatically be applied to your account. For instance, if you accrue $35 in clicks in one month, but you have a daily budget of $1 per day (and therefore $30 per 30-day billing period), you'll receive a $5 overdelivery credit.

Note: pay for conversions campaigns are billed differently, and can be billed for more than 2 times the daily budget. 

To see whether you've received any overdelivery credits:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. At the top of the page, click the gear icon and choose Billing & payments. Go there now
3. Click Transactions from the menu on the left.
4. Click Campaign activity.
5. Any credits for excess activity will be labeled Overdelivery credit.

If you use the automatic payment setting and then make a manual payment, you might be charged on your automatic billing cycle. Here's why:

• An automatic payment was already in progress when you initiated your payment: The automatic payment cycle is punctual, so if you made your payment when this process was underway, you might still be charged. This is most likely to happen if you make a payment when you're close to your billing threshold, at the end of the calendar month, or at the end of a 30-day billing period.
• You reached the end of your billing cycle: After you make a manual payment, your account returns to its usual billing cycle. You'll receive an automatic charge after your account costs reach your billing threshold, or after 30 days have passed since your last automatic payment, whichever happens first.

Once your promotional credit runs out, your ads will continue to run and you'll accrue advertising costs—if you're on the automatic payment setting, that is. If you've used up your credit and want to stop accruing costs, pause your campaigns.

You might be charged outside your billing cycle in the following cases:

• You've made a manual payment (by clicking on the Make a payment button in your account). Although automatic payments are processed within a set billing cycle, you can make a manual payment at any time.
• Your account might recently have been upgraded to a new billing interface. When this happens, you're charged for your account balance at the time of this upgrade—you're not being charged for the upgrade. This one-time charge is outside of your normal billing cycle. All your future charges should be within your usual billing cycle.

When you stop your ads from running—by canceling your account or pausing or removing your campaigns—the Google Ads system can take several hours to halt your ads completely. At this point, you won't accrue any more costs.

However, you'll be billed for any unpaid advertising costs that accrued before your ads stopped running. Our system operates on a 30-day billing cycle, so you might not receive your final charges for several weeks.

To see whether you have any unpaid advertising costs, click the gear icon and choose Billing & payments, then look at your current balance at the top of the page.

Sometimes, your bank statement charges look a bit different from those you see in your Google Ads account. Here are some common reasons why:

Charges are off by a day or two
In most cases, this is expected because charges can post to Google Ads and bank statements on different days. Since both Google Ads and banks operate on different systems, payments don't always happen at the same time.

Bank charges aren't appearing in Google Ads
If this happens, here's what you can do to review the two accounts:

1. If you have more than one Google Ads account, check each account to see if the charges appear (in many cases, your 10-digit customer ID number is shown on your bank statement). See more about how charges appear below, or learn more about unauthorized charges.
2. If you still can't figure out where the charge is coming from, you can contact our support team. Have a screenshot or scanned copy of the charges in question ready. This will help us research the charge more easily. And be sure to block out all charges and other information that isn't associated with the charge in question—your privacy is important to us.