Table of contents
About Balances
To edit a balance, you need a Business Manager or Admin user role in the CMax account. You can manage Balances on the Billing > Balances page of CMax. Only internal Criteo teams can create a balance and edit a balance amount. Reach out to your Criteo team to create or edit the funds in a balance.
Balances are required to add funds to an account so that your campaigns can run. When you create a balance, you can choose a certain amount of money you'd like to spend over a certain period of time for one or multiple campaigns.
Balances can also help you control costs across multiple campaigns in addition to your campaigns’ budget.
Campaign Budget and Balance
A balance acts only as a spend cap across campaigns that are linked to the balance. When the total costs of all linked campaigns reach the balance amount, then all linked campaigns will stop running, even if that occurs before the set end date.
There are two types of balances:
Onsite - Functions only for On-site Sponsored Products and On-site Display campaigns
Offsite - Functions only for Off-site campaigns
A balance doesn't distribute your costs across campaigns or across a set time span. You need campaign budgets, line item budgets, and pacing to do that.
Balance Status
Balances may have one of the following statuses, which control whether or not a balance is currently funding your campaigns:
Active: Your balance has available funds and today's date is between its start and end dates. Linked campaigns can spend from this balance.
Scheduled: Your balance has available funds and its start date is in the future. Linked campaigns can’t spend from this balance yet.
Ended: Your balance has run out of funds or is past the end date. Linked campaigns can’t spend from this balance anymore.
The Spend column displays the total spend for a balance so far.
The Remaining Balance column displays the remaining available funds of the balance to your linked campaigns. It is the difference between Deposit Amount and Spend.
Pause a Balance
You cannot remove a campaign from your balance but you can stop the campaign from using your balance available funds.
Stopping a campaign from using your balance available funds:
Click Billing on the top navigation menu and select Balances
Click on the name of the balance from which you'd like to stop your campaign from spending,
Use the Off/On toggle in front of the campaigns and switch it to Off for each campaign you want to stop from using the balance funds.
Your campaigns have now stopped using your balance.
Edit a Balance
To edit your balance:
Click Billing on the top navigation menu and select Balances
In the balance you want to edit, click on the edit icon next to the settings you want to change
You can:
Edit a balance's Purchase Order (PO) number
Add campaigns to a balance (but cannot remove)
Pause or activate which campaigns draw from which balances
Can I still edit my balance after the linked campaign's launch?
Yes.
Your campaigns will stop running if their linked balance is toggled off, if the balance hits the specified capped amount, or if the end date is reached. Check your balance regularly to make sure your campaigns have sufficient available funds to them.
Linking a Balance
Adding campaigns to your balance
Click Billing on the top navigation menu and select Balances
Click on the name of the balance you want to add campaigns to
Click + Campaign. Select one or multiple campaigns to link to your balance.
Click Save. Your campaigns have now been added to your balance.