Automations FAQ
Scheduling, plans, proposed changes and why an automation found nothing.
Will an automation change my account without asking?
Only if you tell it to. A changing automation records what it wants to change and waits for you to press Apply these changes. It writes to Google Ads by itself only when you turn on Apply automatically for that automation.
Do I need a plan?
You can set an automation up and save its settings without one. A Flowboost plan is required to activate it, to run it by hand and to apply a run's changes. See Automations for the full list.
Why can I not activate?
Two reasons. Either no schedule is set, in which case the button offers to take you to the schedule instead, or the organisation has no plan, in which case Flowboost says so and offers to show you the plans. Your settings are kept either way.
The automation is active but nothing has run
Check, in this order: that a schedule is set, that the Google Ads account and its connection are still active, and that the organisation still has a plan. Scheduled runs stop when any of those is missing.
The run history tells you which situation you are in. No runs at all means the automation is not running. Runs that completed with nothing to report mean it is running and finding nothing.
A run completed but found nothing
That is a normal result. It means nothing in the account met your thresholds during the window the automation read.
If you expected results, the usual cause is a threshold set higher than the account can clear, or a campaign label filter that excludes more than you meant. Try lowering one threshold at a time so you can see which one was the blocker.
What timezone do schedules use?
The timezone of the Google Ads account, not yours. A daily automation set to 09:00 runs at 09:00 where the account lives.
Can one automation cover several accounts?
Settings are per Google Ads account, so an automation is configured separately for each. The account you are editing is the one selected in the project selector in the navigation.
Why did some proposed changes not apply?
A change can be rejected by Google Ads, in which case the run shows the reason next to it. An apply can also be partly confirmed, where Google accepted some of the set and did not confirm the rest. The unconfirmed ones may still have gone through, so check the campaigns named before changing them by hand.
Can I apply the same proposal twice?
No. A proposal is applied once. If an apply is wholly refused, that proposal closes and the next run proposes fresh changes from current data. Re-sending an old proposal could act on budgets or search terms that have since moved.
I changed a setting. Why did the next run behave the same?
Check the change was saved. The footer shows Unsaved changes while anything is pending, and Run now is disabled until you save, so a run always reflects what you can see.
Do my settings track your defaults?
Only until you save. Settings arrive filled in with a standard value, and once you save, those values belong to your account. Later changes we make to the standard values do not reach an account that has already been saved.
Is this the same as the free Google Ads scripts?
No. The scripts are standalone files you install and schedule in your own Google Ads account. An automation is run by us, keeps a history of every run and shows you proposed changes before applying them. Some capabilities exist in both forms, but they are separate products and no settings are shared.