Spend collection: manual, auto-collect and reloading a day

The extension takes the spend of each ad for a day from the ad account open in Ads Manager and passes it to the tracker, and the tracker distributes the amounts across campaigns. Before the first collection, install the extension and paste the key into it, see Extension for Facebook spend. Collection works with a paid license.

Collect manually

1. Open Ads Manager with the ad account you need.
2. Open the extension window. It should show the lines “Ads Manager session found” («Сессия Ads Manager найдена») and “Account” («Аккаунт») with the account ID.
3. Click Collect now («Собрать сейчас»). While collection is running, the window says “Collecting spend…” («Собираем расходы…») and the button is inactive.

After collection, the window shows a line like “Rows accepted: 124 · days: 3” («Принято строк: 124 · дней: 3») with the date and time. One row is one ad for one day. If an error text is shown instead, find it on the Spend extension: errors and how to fix them page.

The state of a day in the tracker is shown by the days table, see below.

Auto-collect

1. In the extension window, check Auto-collect every 30 minutes («Автосбор каждые 30 минут»).
2. Click Save («Сохранить»). The message “Settings saved” («Настройки сохранены») appears.

The extension runs the same collection every 30 minutes: the same account and the same Days back («Дней назад») period. If no Ads Manager session is found, the run ends with the message “Open Ads Manager with the selected ad account” («Откройте Ads Manager с выбранным рекламным аккаунтом»). The result of the last collection is visible when you open the extension window.

To turn off auto-collect, clear the checkbox and click Save.

The Days back period

The Days back field sets how many days to collect in one run: today and the previous days. The default is 3, that is, today and the two days before it. An integer from 1 to 31 is allowed.

1. Enter a number in the Days back field.
2. Click Save. The new period takes effect only after saving.

Days are counted in the ad account's time zone and passed one at a time, from today to earlier ones. On an error, collection stops: that day and earlier days aren't passed, while the days sent before it have already been accepted by the tracker.

What is passed to the tracker

For each day, the extension sends:

• the ad account ID;
• the date, currency and time zone of the account;
• the time the data was received;
• a list of ads: the ad ID and the spend for the day.

The Meta token, cookies, and campaign and ad names aren't passed to the tracker. The Meta token, the key and the extension settings are stored in the browser.

How spend gets into reports

Each transfer of a day is a full snapshot of the account for that day.

• A snapshot replaces the account's earlier data for the day rather than adding to it: collecting again doesn't double the spend.
• An ad's spend is split between campaigns in proportion to the number of clicks for that day that have this ad's ID recorded in the selected field. The field is set in Settings → Spend («Настройки → Расходы»), in the Ad ID field («Поле с ID объявления») list.
• An ad without such clicks for the day stays unmatched, and its spend doesn't get into reports.
• Amounts are converted to USD at the rate for the spend date. The rate is fixed for the account and day at the first snapshot and doesn't change afterwards, see Currencies and rates.
• An empty snapshot is accepted too: the account's spend for that day becomes zero.

Uploaded spend replaces the campaign's calculated cost for that day, see Campaign cost models. How it's split across clicks inside a report is covered on the Report metrics and formulas page.

Days table

The state of each day is shown in a table on the Settings → Spend tab. The tab is visible to the owner and the admin. The table refreshes automatically and holds up to the last 60 days.

If the No clicks column isn't zero, some ads have spend, but there are no clicks with their ID in the selected field for the day. In the Facebook Ads source template, the ad ID is passed in sub_id_4, see Source tokens and link parameters.

Reloading a day

Each collection passes all days of the period again, and the tracker distributes them across campaigns again. This is how ads get matched when clicks with their ID appeared after the previous collection. Without a new snapshot, a day isn't recalculated.

To reload an earlier day:

1. Set Days back to a number that puts the day you need into the period. For a day five days ago, that's 6.
2. Click Save.
3. Click Collect now.

The day gets the “Queued” state, then “Applied”. The period always starts from today, so all days after the one you need are passed along with it. You can load today and the 30 previous days.

Several ad accounts

In one run, the extension collects one account: the one opened last in Ads Manager. Auto-collect collects the same account.

1. Open the next account in Ads Manager.
2. Open the extension window. The “Account” line should show the ID of this account.
3. Click Collect now.

Snapshots of different accounts for a day are stored separately but distributed across campaigns together. Rules:

• Each account has its own time zone, and the extension passes it along with the day. An account's spend for a day goes to the clicks that arrived on that day by the account's own clock. Accounts with different time zones are collected into one workspace, and their amounts for one date add up into the campaign's cost.
• If an account's time zone changed, the next collection replaces the days that fall into its period together with the time zone: the spend of those days is distributed again using the new day boundaries.
• One ad ID for a day can come from only one account.

Limits

• One snapshot (one account, one day): up to 10 000 ads.
• Per day: up to 100 ad accounts in a workspace.
• Per day across all accounts: up to 100 000 ads.

If a limit is exceeded, the day isn't accepted, and the extension shows an error, see Spend extension: errors and how to fix them.