Google Ads Account Transfer Between Agencies in 2026: Billing Transfer, the Seven-Day Clock and Sequential Liability

A Google Ads account transfer between agencies sounds like a single move: the client “hands the account over” to a new partner. In reality three separate things travel, on three separate sets of rules — user access, the link to a manager account, and responsibility for paying the bill. The expensive failure lives in the gap between them. The paying party changes, nobody relinks the account to the new manager account, and the ads stop. Google’s own instructions give you seven days.

Below are both official 2026 procedures with the exact buttons and fields, the two different clocks that govern them, how Sequential Liability puts two payments profiles on one invoice, what consolidated billing actually requires, and what happens to a leftover balance and a credit line. There is also one dated change worth putting in your calendar: starting the week of December 7, 2026, multi-party approval behaves differently in the Google Ads API.

Three things people call “the account”

Separate them and the order of operations becomes obvious.

Object	What it is	How it changes hands	What breaks if you miss it
User access	Individual emails with roles inside the account	Invite and remove users	The previous team still reads and edits live campaigns
Manager account link	The tie between the client account and an agency MCC	Manager invitation and unlink	No billing visibility or shared resources — and, at worst, ads stop serving
Paying manager	Which payments profile receives the bill for the spend	Only the Change who pays procedure	Invoices keep going to the old agency and spend accrues on the wrong profile

Access levels and invitations are covered in detail in our piece on Google Ads agency account access, ownership and a clean exit, and hierarchy design in the guide to the Google Ads manager account. This article is about the third object — the payer — because that one moves only through a dedicated flow that no invitation can replace.

Two procedures, two different clocks

Google documents the same move from both ends, and the deadlines on the two pages are not the same. That is not an inconsistency: the clocks apply to different steps.

	Outgoing side: External Billing Transfer	Incoming side: accepting a Change who pays request
Who starts it	The current paying manager — the outgoing agency	The receiving agency only responds
Access required	Admin on the current paying manager	Admin on the named manager account or above it in the hierarchy
Clock	Seven days for the receiving side to act, then the request cancels itself	Up to 48 hours of Google Support review once both sides have finished
Status of the flow	Standard functionality	Documented as beta, with a list of gaps
Critical step after the transfer date	—	Link the account to your MCC within seven days or ads stop running

One detail is easy to misread. The receiving flow lets you pick a different paying manager, but only inside the same manager account tree. A move to a different company is specifically an External Billing Transfer, and the outgoing agency has to start it. If you are on the receiving end and your MCC is not in the dropdown, the correct action is to decline with a reason and ask for the request to be resubmitted with the right ID — not to force the transfer onto whatever manager account the list offers.

Handing a client account to another agency

The outgoing side follows Transfer your client account to another agency:

1. Sign in to the manager account that is the paying manager for this client. You can confirm which one that is on the Billing Settings page of the client account.
2. Pick the client account in the account selector.
3. Open Billing. It must be the MCC where the child account’s billing setup is managed.
4. Go to Billing transfers, click the pencil icon, then Change who pays. A greyed-out icon means you are not signed in as the paying manager.
5. Choose External Billing Transfer.
6. Fill in the fields: Manager account ID — the ten-digit ID of the new agency’s MCC; Email — an optional point of contact on the receiving side, since admins of the new MCC are notified by default; Future payer name; Transfer date — a specific date or “As soon as possible”; Notes.
7. Click Submit request and confirm in the dialog.

After submission a notification appears at the top of the Billing Transfers page, where you can review details or cancel. Then the clock starts: the new agency has seven days. If it neither approves nor declines, the request cancels automatically and has to be filed again.

A trap worth flagging: a transfer date in the past. The documentation warns that open invoices may be rebilled automatically in that case. If the spend for the closing period matters to how you settle with the client, set the date forward and confirm it in writing with both sides. How to reconcile the numbers afterwards is covered in how to reconcile Google Ads spend.

Taking an account over from the previous agency

The receiving side works from Transfer an existing client account to your agency. The request arrives as an email titled “Request to Change Who Pays initiated” from ads-noreply@google.com, sent to every admin of the manager account the other side named. You can open it three ways: the View Request button in the email; the Notifications section, via the “Incoming request to change who pays” alert; or Billing → Billing setups → Change who pays requests.

The request card shows Transferred account ID, Manager account, Expected transfer date, Expiration date, Status, Notes from requestor and the available actions. Open means the ball is in your court. Pending approval means both sides are done and the request sits with Google Support.

1. Decline — reject with a reason. The reason is visible to the other agency, so write it as a working message rather than a brush-off.
2. Proceed — continue, then pick the paying manager from the dropdown of eligible IDs.
3. Choose the billing setup: an existing consolidated one or a new standalone one, and set the Transfer date.
4. Save and continue.
5. Complete the agreement and budget: agreement type (Budget Service Agreement or Google Ads master service agreement), Budget amount — a figure or “unlimited”, Budget dates — starting no earlier than the transfer date, Budget name, which appears on the invoices, plus optional Purchase order and Notes.
6. Submit request. The status flips to Pending approval.

Google Support then reviews it. They may contact you, or decline the request so it can be refiled; in the normal case approval lands within 48 hours. At this same step, an agency that operates under that contract model can create the billing setup with Sequential Liability for new accounts.

The seven days that take your ads down

This is the only place in either instruction where Google says the ads stop. The current flow does not unlink the account from the old MCC automatically, and it does not link it to the new one either. The receiving agency has to create that link manually within seven days of the transfer, or the ads stop serving.

A billing transfer moves who pays. It does not move the account’s link to your manager account. Those are two actions, and the second one is manual work inside a seven-day window.

Practical consequence for the contract: the transfer date and the relink date belong in the plan as two separate line items with two named owners. And neither should land on a Friday before a long weekend.

What the receiving flow does not do yet

The incoming-request page is labelled beta and lists its gaps outright. At the time of writing these are unavailable:

• a notification that a transfer is pending;
• automatic unlinking from the previous manager account;
• a choice of service agreement — only the Master Service Agreement is compatible, and a Budget Service Agreement requires a support request;
• self-service setup of a payments profile under the Loi Sapin model, which also goes through support.

In other words, part of the move will certainly travel through a support ticket, so the real timeline is not set by the interface clocks alone. Plan two weeks, not one afternoon.

Sequential Liability: who pays if the agency does not

This is the least discussed setting in agency billing. Under Sequential Liability an account and its invoices carry two payments profiles: the primary one belongs to the agency and receives the invoice, and the secondary one belongs to the advertiser, who in Google’s own wording is “sequentially liable for invoice payment if the agency does not pay”.

Creating that billing setup from a manager account, per How to create a new billing setup with Sequential Liability: the Billing icon → Billing setups → the plus button → choose billing country and currency → set the Agency payments profile → set the Advertiser payments profile → under “How you pay” enter the name that will appear on invoices → Create Billing Setup. The advertiser dropdown only lists profiles already linked to the MCC; if yours is missing, the “Create or link an advertiser payments profile” option leads to a support form.

The constraint people discover late: under a manager account linked to a Sequential Liability profile you cannot create an ordinary billing setup without that model. Serving clients on both schemes means standing up a separate MCC and making it the paying manager. If you are designing an agency hierarchy now, build that in from the start — reshaping it under live budgets costs far more.

For the advertiser the takeaway runs the other way. Signing that model keeps you as the second line of liability on an invoice formally addressed to someone else. Raise it before signing, alongside account ownership — the ground covered in how to choose a Google Ads management company.

Consolidated billing: requirements and the ceiling

A Google Ads account transfer into an agency almost always ends with the question of whether the account joins the shared invoice. The requirements are strict and worth checking before the move:

• a manager account is required, and every account on one invoice is linked to the same paying manager;
• monthly invoicing is mandatory: “You must use the monthly invoicing payment setting to pay for advertising costs”;
• “All accounts that share an invoice must use the same currency” — with several currencies you get a separate consolidated invoice per currency;
• the ceiling is explicit: “A single consolidated billing invoice can have up to 50,000 Google Ads accounts”, beyond which you need another setup;
• consolidated billing “isn’t available to media agencies”, and it is no longer offered to advertisers in France under Loi Sapin.

The invoice itself comes with a CSV of campaign-level costs — clicks, impressions, adjustments and credits — plus a ZIP archive holding a monthly report for each account. That package is the cheapest formal basis you will get for checking an agency report line by line.

Switching to invoicing inside the account is a one-way door

In 2026 Google moved the switch to monthly invoicing into the account interface: Billing → Summary, then Get Started in the side panel. From there you pick an existing MCC where you hold Admin access or create one; select the accounts to move, with the documentation warning “Ensure you select all accounts to avoid suspension”; set the budget (a figure or unlimited, dates starting no earlier than the transfer date, a name that shows on invoices, an optional PO number); confirm the organisation and address, which support has to change for you; upload proof of business registration such as a tax ID document; then confirm and submit. Request statuses are “In-progress/Under Review” and “Action Required” if the documents fail review. Once approved, a credit line is issued and a Master Service Agreement arrives by email for you to accept.

The warning that matters most: once you switch, “you won’t be able to switch back to an unaccepted payment option”. Two more caveats from the same section — the switch option only appears after advertiser verification is complete, and bulk migration only shows accounts that share one payments profile and one currency. Thresholds and declines on the card side are covered in Google Ads billing: payment thresholds, declines and monthly invoicing, and verification itself on our Google Ads verification page.

Balance, credit line and spend already accrued

This is where the two sides’ expectations most often diverge.

Item	What is officially stated
Positive card balance when switching to invoicing	Refunded to the original payment method; promotional funds and some adjustments are not refunded
Refund timing	Up to two weeks on Google’s side, plus your bank’s processing time
Negative balance	Charged to the primary payment method within 30 days
Monthly invoicing eligibility	Business registered for at least one year; the account spends at least USD 5,000 in any three of the last twelve months, and spend on other accounts does not count
What the credit line sets	Your maximum average daily budget; the monthly spending limit is that average daily budget multiplied by 30.4
Headroom to plan for	To spend 10,000 a month on 30-day terms the line needs to be at least 20,000: month two accrues while month one is still being paid

What happens to a leftover balance during an agency-to-agency billing transfer specifically is not documented — a gap we return to below. The refund mechanics for leaving an account entirely are covered in how to cancel a Google Ads account and get your refund.

From the week of December 7, 2026: multi-party approval in the API

If access in your accounts is granted programmatically rather than by hand, your migration timeline depends on this too. According to trade coverage published on November 8, 2026, multi-party approval behaviour changes from the week of December 7:

• a user access invitation is created only after approval — the resource no longer appears immediately, and when approval is needed the resource name comes back empty;
• requests whose target has been changed or deleted get a dedicated STALE_MULTI_PARTY_AUTH_REQUEST error, surfaced as UNKNOWN with detail fields in versions v23 to v25;
• batch approval arrives: up to 100 pending reviews per call instead of one.

Multi-party approval itself reached the API in mid-2026, and a pending request expires after 20 days. There is also a documented inconsistency: the help page states that read-only roles and API users are exempt from approval, while developer posts describe reviews applying to API requests as well. The practical read is simple — audit your code before December 7 and do not schedule a bulk access rollout for that week. Background on API access lives in our guide to Google Ads API access in 2026.

A two-week plan for a Google Ads account transfer

1. Days 1–2. Record who the paying manager is today (the Billing Settings page in the client account), the billing country and currency, and the billing type — automatic payments or monthly invoicing.
2. Days 2–3. Take a baseline: campaign exports, the list of conversion actions, the change history.
3. Day 3. Agree the transfer date in writing. A past date only as a deliberate choice, knowing open invoices may be rebilled.
4. Day 4. The outgoing side files the External Billing Transfer with the ten-digit ID of the new MCC.
5. Days 4–7. The receiving side responds. Seven days is a hard stop; after it the request is gone.
6. Days 5–9. Accept the email invitations: Account Transfer Agreement, Budget Agreement, Service Agreement. The transfer does not finalise without them, and the documentation asks you not to sit on those emails.
7. Days 7–9. Google Support review — normally up to 48 hours.
8. Transfer date. Link the account to your MCC. Seven-day window, or the ads stop.
9. Transfer date + 1. Remove the outgoing team’s access and check that cross-account conversions are not anchored to someone else’s manager account.
10. Days 10–14. Reconcile the first invoice and the spend against your baseline.

What to put in the contract before the move

Clause	Why this one
Transfer date and relink date as separate line items	Two different actions with a seven-day window to ads stopping between them
Who pays for spend accrued before the transfer date	Not documented, and a past-dated transfer can rebill open invoices
Liability model: ordinary setup or Sequential Liability	In the second case the advertiser is the second line of payment liability
Who receives the agreement invitations and by when they accept	Without all three acceptances the transfer never finalises
What travels with the account: exports, conversion inventory, analytics access	The documentation says nothing about history, conversions or audiences moving
How the outgoing team’s access is removed	The flow performs no automatic unlink

Five mistakes that cost impressions and money

1. Treating a billing transfer as the whole move. The payer changes, the new manager link never happens, and seven days later the ads are down.
2. Starting from the wrong end. A move to a different company is filed by the outgoing agency from its paying manager. The receiving side can only accept or decline — and can only choose a manager account inside the same tree.
3. Ignoring the agreement emails. All three invitations have to be accepted, otherwise the transfer sits unfinished while both sides assume it is done.
4. Back-dating the transfer to close the month. Open invoices may be rebilled automatically and your client settlement drifts.
5. Designing the agency hierarchy without Sequential Liability in mind. You cannot create an ordinary setup under an MCC tied to that profile — a separate manager account is required.

What the documentation does not say

• What happens to account history, conversion actions and audiences when the payer changes — none of the pages lists this.
• Where a leftover balance and a credit line end up in a billing transfer specifically; only the refund on switching to invoicing is described.
• Who settles spend accrued before the transfer date when the invoice has not been issued yet.
• Which countries and regions support the Sequential Liability model.
• What happens to serving between filing the request and its approval — only the seven days after the transfer are addressed.
• Last-updated dates: none of the pages reviewed here carries one, while the receiving flow is simultaneously labelled beta.
• Any side-by-side view of the two procedures: the 48-hour and seven-day clocks live on separate pages and are never reconciled.

The line this blog does not cross

This article covers official platform procedures: who files a payer change, on what clock, and what breaks along the way. We do not publish ways around Google’s checks, and there are no instructions here for bypassing verification or review. If you need working infrastructure and careful day-to-day management, see Google Ads agency accounts and our services; the economics of paying an agency are broken down in Google Ads management cost.

FAQ: Google Ads account transfer

Can we transfer an account just by inviting the new agency into it?

That moves access and the manager link, not the payer. If invoices for the spend should go to the new agency, the Change who pays procedure is required — internal or external.

Who should start a move to a different company?

The current paying manager, meaning the outgoing agency, with Admin access. The receiving side only responds to the request.

How long does the new agency have to respond?

Seven days. If the request is neither approved nor declined in that window, it cancels automatically and has to be filed again.

Why is the Change who pays icon greyed out?

You are not signed in as the current paying manager, or the payments profiles are not linked to it. An external transfer specifically requires Admin access on the paying manager.

What happens if we do not link the account to our MCC after the transfer?

The instruction is explicit: the link has to be made within seven days of the transfer, otherwise the ads stop running.

What is Sequential Liability in plain terms?

A model where an account carries two payments profiles: the invoice goes to the agency, and the advertiser is liable for paying it if the agency does not.

Can one MCC hold both ordinary and Sequential Liability setups?

No. Under a manager account linked to a Sequential Liability profile you cannot create an ordinary billing setup, so you need a separate MCC acting as paying manager.

What are the eligibility criteria for monthly invoicing?

The business must have been registered for at least a year, and the account must spend at least USD 5,000 in any three of the last twelve months. Spend on other accounts does not count.

How many accounts fit on one consolidated invoice?

Up to 50,000, provided they share one paying manager and one currency. With multiple currencies you get a separate invoice per currency.

What happens to a card balance when switching to invoicing?

A positive balance is refunded to the original payment method, apart from promotional funds and some adjustments, within up to two weeks on Google’s side plus bank time. A negative balance is charged within 30 days.

Can we go back to card payments after moving to monthly invoicing?

No. The documentation warns directly that you will not be able to switch back to an unaccepted payment option.

What changes in the API on December 7, 2026?

Invitations will be created only after approval, a dedicated error appears for stale requests, and batch approval handles up to 100 reviews per call. Audit your code before that week.