How Billing Works: Starting Balance and Recharges

Bronco works on a prepaid balance. You add funds to your account, and your campaigns draw the balance down as they deliver. This article explains how much you need to go live, when your payment method is charged, and what happens if your balance runs low.

The short version

When	What you're charged
Before your campaign goes live	Enough to bring your balance up to the starting balance: about one week of your planned daily spend, with a $50 minimum.
While your campaigns run	An automatic recharge whenever your balance covers less than about three days of your recent spend. It brings you back up to about one week, or to what your strategies have left to spend if that's less.
Any time you choose	Whatever you add yourself with Add Funds.

Everything you pay goes into your balance. It isn't a fee, and it's only spent as your ads deliver.

The starting balance

Before a campaign can be published, your balance has to cover 7 days of your planned daily spend.

• The minimum starting balance is $50.
• The maximum is $5,000, however large your budgets are.

You only pay the difference between the starting balance and what's already in your account. If your balance already covers it, there's nothing to pay.

How planned daily spend is worked out

• A strategy with a Daily Budget counts as that amount per day.
• A strategy with a Lifetime Budget is spread evenly across its schedule: the budget divided by the number of days between its start and end dates. If it has no end date, it's spread over 30 days.

Bronco adds this up across every strategy in the campaign you're publishing, plus any strategies you already have running in other campaigns.

Examples

Your campaign	Planned daily spend	Starting balance
One strategy at $100 per day	$100	$700
One strategy with a $3,000 lifetime budget over 30 days	$100	$700
Two strategies at $50 and $150 per day	$200	$1,400
One strategy at $5 per day	$5	$50 (the minimum)
One strategy at $1,000 per day	$1,000	$5,000 (the maximum)

Where you pay it

You'll see the exact amount on the campaign summary, the last step before publishing, under Account Balance:

A starting balance of $700.00 is needed before your campaign can deliver. Current balance: $0.00.

Click Pay to charge the shortfall to your default payment method. Nothing is charged until you click it.

• Card payments reach your balance right away.
• Bank payments (ACH) take 2–4 business days to clear. The task shows Processing until the payment settles, and you can publish once it does.

See The Campaign Summary and Publishing for the rest of the checklist.

Automatic recharges

Once your campaigns are spending, Bronco keeps your balance topped up so delivery doesn't stop.

• Bronco looks at your average daily spend over the last 7 days.
• When your balance covers less than 3 days of that spend, your default payment method is charged.
• The charge is the amount needed to bring your balance back to 7 days of spend.
• A recharge never takes your balance above what your strategies have left to spend.
• A single recharge is never more than $5,000, and it's at least $50 unless your strategies have less than that left to spend.

For example, if your campaigns are spending about $100 a day, a recharge happens when your balance drops below about $300. With $280 left, the recharge would be $420, bringing you back to $700.

Because recharges follow what you're actually spending, the amounts go up or down as your campaigns do.

When a budget is nearly spent

Bronco doesn't collect more than your strategies can still use. Before each recharge it adds up what's left to spend across your Active strategies:

• A strategy with a Lifetime Budget has its budget left, less what it has already spent.
• A strategy with a Daily Budget and an end date has its daily amount left for each remaining day.
• A strategy with a Daily Budget and no end date has no limit, so while it's running your recharges keep following the 7-day rule above.

Strategies that are paused, archived or past their end date have nothing left to spend.

If your balance already covers what's left, there's no recharge. If it doesn't, the recharge only makes up the difference, even when that's less than $50.

For example, a strategy with a $600 lifetime budget over 10 days spends about $60 a day and starts with a $420 balance. Partway through, with $300 spent and $120 left in your balance, the strategy has $300 left to spend. The recharge is $180 rather than a full week, which brings what you've paid to $600, the same as the budget. There are no more recharges after that.

If you pause everything, recharges stop until you resume. The one exception is a balance that has dropped below zero: a recharge can still bring it back up to zero.

If a recharge doesn't go through

Bronco tries again later, at most once every 6 hours, and with a smaller amount after a declined charge. While a bank payment is still clearing, no further recharge is attempted.

To avoid an interruption, keep an active default payment method on file under Billing → Payments, and replace a card before it expires.

If your balance runs out

If your balance drops below zero, your campaigns show Blocked and delivery pauses. Nothing is deleted and your settings are kept.

Delivery resumes on its own once your balance is positive again, whether from a successful recharge or from funds you add yourself. Bronco checks balances throughout the day, so this typically happens shortly after the funds arrive. Remember that bank payments take 2–4 business days to clear.

Adding funds yourself

You can add to your balance at any time under Billing → Payments → Add Funds. The minimum is $1. A larger balance means fewer automatic recharges.

Seeing what you've been charged

• Billing → Payments lists every payment into your balance, including automatic recharges, with receipts where available.
• Billing → Statement shows how your payments were applied to each campaign's spend.

See Invoices, Payments, and Statements.

Unused funds

Your balance stays on your account for future campaigns. If you'd like unused funds returned, contact support and we'll refund them.

Accounts billed by invoice

Some accounts are billed by invoice instead of a prepaid balance. If that's you, the starting balance and automatic recharges don't apply, and you won't see the Account Balance task when publishing.