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:
On-site - Functions only for On-site Sponsored Products and On-site Display campaigns
Off-site Awareness - 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:
In your UI, click on Billing on the top navigation menu and access the Billing Section of the Commerce Max Platform,
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.
Tip: use filtering options on Status or Brands to quickly identify campaigns you'd like to switch off in the list.Click Save. Your campaigns have now stopped using your balance.
Keep in mind: Campaigns switched to Off will remain in your dashboards so that you can always toggle them back on later. The Spend column shows you each campaign’s costs that were accrued on your balance.
Edit a Balance
How to edit your balance:
Go to the Billing section (click on Billing in the header of CMax platform)
Find the balance you want to edit
Click on the edit icon next to the settings you want to change.
CMax users 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
In your UI, click on Billing on the top navigation menu and access the Billing Section of the Commerce Max Platform
Click on the name of the balance you want to add campaigns to,
Select one or multiple campaigns to link to your balance.
Tip: use filtering options on Status or Brands to identify quickly campaigns you'd like to link in the list.
Click Save. Your campaigns have now been added to your balance.
Keep in mind: If you link a campaign to multiple active balances, your campaign costs will be allocated in the following order:
If your balance has end dates: the campaign costs are allocated first to the balance with the soonest end date before moving to the other balances.
If you didn’t set up end dates for your balance: the campaign costs are allocated first to the balance with the earliest start date before moving to the other balances.
If you didn’t set up end dates for your balance and the start dates are the same: campaign costs are allocated to the balance that was created first in the UI.