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I overspent on a clients google ads account by $104,000- what’s going to happen to me?
Posted by on May 23, 2026 at 6:04 pmI worked for an agency that got acquired on March 2026. Previous to that, I worked at the agency for 3 years.
Last week I had a meeting that they wanted to transition me to ppc manager over the next 6 months.
There was always 2 ppc specialist working on 25+ client google ads accoint. The 1 ppc person quit and we were in the middle of hiring a 2nd when the acquisition happened.
They had no intention of hiring a 2nd ppc person so I took on all 25 clients, Google ads only.
We've had meetings with all clients to talk about the acquisition and make sure to reassure them I'm staying on their account.
This 1 client has an ad spend of $150,000 and always wants to spend more.
For google their budget is $60,000. Last month we were pacing slowly so I increased the daily to reach the $60k before April ends, but I never reduced the daily back on May 1.
This is a law client. We had to tell him yesterday that we overspend $104k and he was pissed, even tho he could afford. The overspend brought him an additional $223,000 revenue, which covers the $104k plus more for profit, but he doesn't care, he wants the agency to pay for it.
Everyone's just pissed at me but still very respectful.
I ended up have a miscarriage may 1, and my 24 year old cat died the week after and the same week my kid had to get a cast for her leg, so lots of doctor appointment- this was the first time I have ever made a mistake. They don't know all of these details but everything happened within a 2 week period, and I only called in sick 3 days total.
What is going to happen to me?
There's nothing in the contract about overage and the client cc is attached to all ad platforms.
Is the agency liable for the $104k overage?
If they keep me, how do I recover from this?
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1 Reply
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The agency is responsible for the overage. These things happen very frequently in agency life.
Yes leadership will be pissed. But if it’s any decent leadership they’ll look into whether or not this was a situation where the employee was set up to fail or if it is a trend or incompetence.
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Hey I can’t answer your real question, but please take the time off next time. You went through a lot and deserved to disconnect and fresh eyes may have caught this sooner. Not blaming anything. Just work isn’t the most important thing, your mental and physical health is.
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In the U.S. the company is liable, not you. Depending on company this could be a learning experience. I did this early in my career by about $80k, got told to write up a document detailing how I will ensure it didn’t happen again. Nothing else happened.
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Yes, the agency could be liable for the $104k. The agency would also have E&O insurance for this exact reason. Chances are:
– The agency will negotiate with the client and Google to lower their exposure; given the client is a law firm, and Google will argue they delivers the service, getting any significant reductions may be a challenge;
– The agency will contact their insurer for E&O — there will be an investigation but hopefully agency is covered less their deductible (and likely will see premiums go up);
– The agency needs to get their processes in order to mitigate this from ever happening again; and/or
– You may get reprimanded or could even be terminated because of this… but see my comments below.While you can take some blame for this, this is not entirely your fault. The agency should have proper checks and balances to ensure — especially with high spend clients — this doesn’t happen (or if it does it’s caught early). Anyone who works makes mistakes. I’ve worked 35 years and can painfully remember every single one — even from my first few years in agencies. Mistakes happen. Do not blame yourself and it sounds like it’s a very high stress environment, and you’ve had many personal stressors that it’s only natural that mistakes could happen.
I’m sorry for your two losses and your son’s injury. You’ll get past this by learning from the mistake and hopefully regaining the trust of your peers for the thousands of actions you’ve done that were error free.
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I had a bigger oopsie than this. I barely survived getting fired because a couple of the higher ups really liked me, but left for another agency a few months later because I knew I’d never get promoted again.
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First off this is a very stressful situation but really not the end of the world! This happens often, and not just a you issue. In fact, this happened to us in feb-march when we were given wrong budgets and an account overspent by ALOT.
The good news is, this happens so often, for us we opened a google support case and were issued a one time credit. You might not get 100% back but don’t worry you’ll most likely get something back. Additionally if you have any sort of rep with Google I would reach out to them and explain, they might also be able to help. -
The agency should have insurance to cover this. Even as a contractor for google cpc i have this so im always covered for these kinds of mistakes (covers up to 1mil)
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At my agency we would fire you. No questions asked. Then we would tell the client that the problem was caused by an employee who no longer works at the agency. Then we’d probably beg to use future budget to pay this oversight. And if that didn’t work then we’d have to pay it ourselves.
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Next time make sure you make good use of the budget scripts, saved my ass over the times.
Hope all goes well for you, youve got this!
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$104k is A LOT. Some other comments saying this happens often and is no big deal… I’ve worked for some large agencies and $100k of overspend would absolutely not be “just something that happens”… this isn’t to say your circumstances aren’t or shouldn’t be a factor, but this is pretty huge. Next time take time off or ask for coverage. It sounds like you might have had pacing problems before life got rough, but coverage could have at least tried to correct.
Sorry OP, this may indeed be something that prevents you from moving up in this company of they don’t let you go.
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It sounds like you were going through a lot – the company should not have put you under that amount of pressure while you were going through all that. Unfortunately – you’re at the whim of the company right now.
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How could the law firm not notice that their lead flow tripled in one month?!? lol
Agency is on the hook, if I was agency owner, I would try to find the middle ground with the firm. It wasn’t ‘waste’ but it wasn’t intended.
Tough spot but not the end of the world – try to not let it bother you. You are in charge of big money, so big money mistakes happen, it is what it is.
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Director at a performance agency here. If you were reporting to me, here’s what I’d want to see.
Own the error, accountability is key. Summarize why it happened from an operational perspective. Don’t try to divert blame, but explain where the process broke down.
And the most important part, propose solutions that will help prevent future issues of this nature.
As others have said, this is part of agency life. And I’m sure your exec team is aware that dropping from 2 people to 1, managing the same workload is going to carry risk.
Separately, if you feel that this volume of work is unmanageable without introducing these types of issues, I would have that conversation with your manager directly after you approach this conversation with a solution focused mindset.
Good luck, and for what it’s worth this would definitely be a fuck up in my agency, but it would not be fireable unless it was an ongoing trend.
Good luck!
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How did you not notice it was overspending during May? You didn’t check the client’s account a single time yet this month?
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Your agency should have E and O insurance and they can make a claimZ
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