Budgets
Plan what each ad account should spend per month, then watch the month against that plan — pacing, drift, and alerts when a budget runs away.
A report tells you what was spent. Budgets tell you whether that was the plan.
You type a monthly amount per ad account — optionally per campaign — and Level compares it against real spend as the month runs: how much should have gone out by today, how much actually did, and how far apart those two are.
The section is two screens, under Budgets in the sidebar:
| Pacing | One month, read-only. Planned, spent, remaining, drift, status — per ad account and per campaign. |
| Plan | A whole year as a grid. This is where the numbers are typed. |
What you need
- The Pro plan or above. On Free both screens open and say Budget pacing · Pro, with a button to redeem an access code.
- At least one connected ad account — a budget is always a budget of an ad account.
- The Manage Budgets permission to type or edit amounts. Without it both screens still open: you can read the year plan and the month's pacing, you just can't change them. See Permissions.
How pacing is calculated
Level uses a linear model: a €3 000 month is expected to spend €100 a day.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Planned | The budget you typed for the month. |
| Spent | Actual spend so far, from the platform data Level has synced. |
| Expected by today | The linear share of the plan for the days elapsed. |
| Drift | Spent minus expected — shown in money, with the percentage in the tooltip. |
| Remaining | Planned minus spent. |
All of it is computed server-side, so two people looking at the same month see the same numbers.
The status vocabulary
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| On track | Drift is inside the budget's tolerance. |
| Over | Spending ahead of plan by more than the tolerance. |
| Under | Spending behind plan by more than the tolerance. |
| Not started | The month hasn't begun yet. |
| Not planned | This ad account has no budget for this month. |
| No data | The ad account has never synced — spend is unknown, not zero. |
| No spend | Days have passed and nothing was spent at all. Usually a paused account rather than a budget problem. |
Campaign budgets sit inside account budgets
A campaign budget is a slice of its ad account's month, not an extra budget on top. Totals therefore count account-level budgets only — counting both would count the same money twice.
Use them when one campaign has a fixed allocation inside a bigger account budget: a seasonal push, a client-earmarked spend.
Next
- Pacing the month — reading the monthly view.
- Planning the year — the grid, and the shortcuts that make filling twelve months bearable.
- Drift alerts — getting told before the month is over.