Getting Started: Creating a Budget – Shape

Shape's Budget Designer takes you through the steps necessary to create a new Budget.

The Budget Designer is an easy-to-use tool that helps you select the unique settings you implement per Budget and then generates the completed Budget after you submit it. Outlined below are customizations you can make to a Budget using Budget Designer.

Creating a Budget

1. Navigate to either the Dashboard or an individual Client View. You can create Budgets from either view (Note: Display will look slightly different depending on where you originate from).

2. Select "Create Budget." The Budget Designer will appear to guide you through creating a Budget.

3. In the Client section of the Budget Designer, select the Client you want to create the Budget for (or confirm it's the correct client if creating a Budget from the Client View). Select "Next."

4. You'll be automatically moved to the "Add Campaigns" section of the Budget Designer.

Select the data source and/or account which the campaigns you want to add are associated with. Then select the campaigns you would like to add to the Budget. Then select "Next."

Note: Selecting a data source first will allow you to filter the screen to show only accounts from that select data source. If you'd rather not filter by data source first, select your chosen account on the Account tab. This will display all campaigns associated with that account.

5. In the Budget section, you'll select if you want a monthly or custom budget cycle.

Monthly

If you manage campaigns on a repeating monthly basis (meaning you are trying to hit a target spend for a 30 to 31-day period each month), utilize the "Monthly budget starts on" option.

Select the day you would like Shape to utilize as the first day of your Budget cycle.
Shape will track campaign spend against your target Budget monthly from that date forward.
Enter your budget amount in the "Budget Amount" field.

Custom

If you manage with variable cycle lengths or that are one-time Budgets, select the Custom budget cycle.

Choose whether your Budget repeats or is a one-time Budget
Toggle "Starts in Future" to on if Budget will begin at a date in the future. Leave off if you want the Budget to begin tracking today.
Set "Current budget cycle" start date
Set the cycle length in months or days
- Example: You can create a 15-day repeating Budget or a one-time quarterly Budget.

Enter your budget amount in the "Budget Amount" field. Select "Next."

6. In the "Alerts" section of Budget Designer, you can select if you'd like to receive alerts when your campaigns have neared percentages of your Budget targets.

You can select to be alerted when your remaining Budget is 90%, 75%, 50%, 20%, 10%, 5%, or 1% of your target spend.
If you would like to send email alerts to contacts inside or outside your organization, you can CC anyone on Budget alerts. Enter an email and hit the "Add Contact" button.

7. Shape offers advanced automation features to simplify Budget management by eliminating repetitive Budget-related tasks. After "Alerts," you'll be navigated to the "Automation" section.

Here, you can enable or disable the following features. Simply click the drop-down feature to enable or disable an automation feature. Follow prompts. Select "Next."

IMPORTANT: If you enable AutoPilot, you must select a mode. The modes are outlined below. All campaigns in the budget will be assigned this mode unless you change them individually (after setting up the budget) at the campaign level.

AutoPilot - Pauses campaign status in advertising platforms once the Budget target (either monthly or daily) has been reached. There are three modes:
- AutoPilot Pause Only- AP pauses your campaigns when your target budget is hit but doesn't re-enable campaigns. This must be done manually.
  - Example: A Client has a Budget with a target spend cap of $400. PPC spend hits $400 on the 25th day of the month. AutoPilot pauses all campaigns in the Budget. AutoPilot will not reactivate any campaigns.

- AutoPilot Pause/Enable - AP pauses your campaigns when your target budget is hit and re-enables them at the start of the next budget cycle (or when the budget target is increased)
  - Example: A Client has a Budget with a target spend cap of $400. PPC spend hits $400 on the 25th day of the month. AutoPilot pauses all campaigns in the Budget. Because the Client has a monthly, repeating Budget, on the first of the following month, AutoPilot will re-enable the campaigns.
- AutoPilot Daily Pause/Enable - Using your budget target, AutoPilot calculates an ideal daily spend that will help you spend evenly across the budget cycle. AutoPilot pauses your campaigns each day if you hit that threshold and re-enables them the next day.
  - Example: A Client has a Budget with a target spend cap of $400 and an ideal daily spend of $13. Campaigns hit $13 in spend every day at which time campaigns are paused. Campaigns are reactivated the next day. The budget spends evenly throughout the month.

CruiseControl - Automatically makes daily budgets adjustments to campaigns to help you hit your target budget cap. Campaign daily budgets will be increased or decreased (within pre-set default, Min and Max thresholds) depending on if spend is above or below your ideal pace.
- Example: A Client has a Budget with a target spend cap of $3000. The ideal daily spend to hit that target Budget is $100/day. After the first 5 days of the month, your total spend is at $700 (or $140/day). If the Budget is on CruiseControl, your default budget is set to $100. The Min you've set is $60 and the Max is $200. CruiseControl may automatically decrease your budget to $60/day until spend once again hits $100/day.

RollOver - Allocates any "unspent" Budget from the current billing cycle to the following Budget cycle. Utilized for Clients with rolling Budgets.
- Example: A Client has a Budget with a target spend cap of $400. Campaigns only spend $350 for the current Budget cycle. RollOver allocated $50 ($400 Budget-$350 spent) to the following Budget cycle. Campaigns now have a target spend cap of $450 for the following Budget cycle.

SmartSync - Once SmartSync is enabled, any new campaigns you add to an account will automatically be added to your Budget. SmartSync was designed for Clients where all campaigns are attributed to a single Budget.
- Example: A Client utilizes one Budget in Shape to track and manage all their Google, Facebook, Microsoft (fka Bing), and LinkedIn campaigns. The PPC Account Manager adds three new campaigns to each advertising platform. If enabled, SmartSync will automatically add those campaigns to the Budget.
  - Note: SmartSync doesn't work for clients with more than one Budget per Client.

8. Enter any Custom Values that apply to your Budget. Select "Next".

Note: If you do not see the custom value you want to apply, click "+New Custom Value" to create a new one.

9. Enter a name for your Budget and hit the "Create" button.

TIP: If you're creating multiple Budgets per Client, create a naming structure to reduce confusion.

10. If you chose to enable AutoPilot and/or CruiseControl in step 7 above, once you "Submit" your Budget, you will be prompted to complete the "Configure Automation Settings" screen.

Toggle select campaigns on or off AutoPilot and/or CruiseControl by clicking each feature's respective plane and/or car icons. Once you selected the campaigns you want AutoPilot and/or CruiseControl enabled for, select "Save."
IMPORTANT:
1. AutoPilot and CruiseControl will automatically be enabled on all of the campaigns you’re adding to the Budget unless you toggle these features off for select campaigns.
2. Campaigns in the Budget that do not have AutoPilot enabled will continue to spend after all campaigns in the Budget have hit their Budget cap.

11. You'll receive a confirmation notification that your Budget has been successfully created.

You can start budgeting immediately, create a "Similar Budget" (which will pre-populate your previously selected Budget settings), or create a "New Budget" (which will start the Budget creation process fresh).

Helpful Links

Creating a Budget

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