Why have I been billed after I paused my campaigns?

When you pause your campaigns, our systems may take up to 24 hours to stop your ads completely. Once your ads are stopped, you will not accrue any more costs. However, per our Advertising Terms of Service, you will still be charged for any unpaid costs that accrued before your ads stopped running. Outstanding balances can be viewed under "Current Balance" on your Billing History page.

If you were billed after pausing your campaigns, it is likely due to one of the following reasons:

• There were unpaid balances on your account. This is the most common reason accounts receive charges after pausing their campaigns. Accounts are charged on the first of every month to account for the previous month's outstanding balances. For more information, please refer to Monthly Billing.
• There was a failed payment on your account. Accounts are automatically suspended for failed charges, so our systems will reattempt charges until they are successful. Successful charges often appear after campaigns are paused.
• The campaigns were never paused. Ensure your campaigns are turned off completely. This will be indicated by a grey "Status" button on your main dashboard. This is especially imperative for teams offboarding the sole admin of an account. To avoid having a campaign left on without your team's knowledge, ensure more than one colleague has access to your Quora Ads Manager. Instructions for adding and removing admins are available here.

To confirm whether or not you were overcharged, please follow these steps:

1. On your Ads Manager dashboard, click the calendar icon in the upper right corner and select "All Time." The account's total spend will appear.
   
2. On your Billing History page, click the calendar icon next to "Download Invoices and select "All Time." The total amount charged to the account will be at the bottom of the page.
3. Check the "Current Balance" on your Billing History page. This is your outstanding balance, which has yet to be charged. 
4. Your total spend (Step 1) should match your total, and incoming, charges (Step 2 + Step 3). If the amounts spent on ads matches the amount charged, your account was not overcharged.

When reviewing your historic charges, please note that Quora's billing system works as threshold payments and monthly payments. 

Each account has a "Billing Threshold" on its Billing & Payments page. Thresholds are not pre-payments. Thresholds indicate when we automatically charge your card. The first threshold is $25 USD, so as soon as your ad spend hits $25, your card will be charged. The threshold then rises with each successful charge to $50, $250, $500, and $750*. The same value thresholds apply in all currencies (converted to the local currency).

If your campaigns paused before the billing threshold was met, the costs they accrued will be charged the first of the following month. Monthly charges cover outstanding charges from the previous month and will be identified as "Monthly" on the Billing & Payments page.

*Thresholds are equivalent to USD $25, $50, $250, $500, and $750. Thresholds are subject to change based on currency exchange rates.

Example

An account with a $25 threshold starts a campaign on January 1st.

If the campaign spends $25 on its first day, the account is automatically charged $25. This charge will appear as a "Threshold" payment on the Billing History page. The account's billing threshold will also increase to $50.

If the campaign spends $20 between January 1st and January 31st, nothing is charged to the account in January. This is because $20 is below the account's billing threshold. To cover the unpaid balance from January, the account is charged $20 on February 1st. This will appear as a "Monthly" payment on the Billing History page.

For more information, please see When am I charged for my Quora ads?. If you believe you were charged incorrectly after pausing your campaigns, please contact us.