Every budget control in Pace belongs to one of three layers. The envelope decides how much an account spends. Steering decides where that money goes. Rails put hard bounds on individual ad sets. Once you know which layer a control lives in, you know what it can and can't do.
A useful mental model: the envelope is the total fuel for the trip, steering is the route, and rails are the guardrails on one stretch of road. Guardrails don't add fuel, and the route doesn't change how much fuel you have.
Layer 1: the envelope
Every ad account runs in exactly one of two modes. You pick the mode in Account Settings, on the Budget tab.
Monthly Budget is the default. You give Pace a monthly number and it adjusts campaign budgets daily so the month lands on target. If you want to sanity-check a number before you set it, the budget pacing calculator does the same arithmetic by hand. If your spend changes through the year, set a different number per month with a budget schedule.
Daily Floor is for accounts that commit to daily spend instead of a monthly total. Instead of one monthly number, you set daily ones:
- A floor, the daily minimum Pace holds every day. Say $400.
- A target, the level Pace cruises at, a little above the floor. Around $460 for that account.
- A soft ceiling. Crossing it triggers an alert, and only an alert. It never restricts spend.
- A hard daily cap that Pace never exceeds. Pace suggests four times the floor, so $1,600 here.
Campaign groups are sub-envelopes inside Monthly Budget mode. A group is a set of campaigns with its own monthly budget and its own goal, and its budget carves out of the account's monthly number. Set groups up on the Groups tab. They're not available in Daily Floor mode (see the questions below).
Note: Daily Floor pacing is available on Pro plans and above.
Layer 2: steering
Goals and efficiency targets decide where money goes inside the envelope. They never change how much you spend. The envelope owns that.
Steering works at three levels:
- The account goal, with an optional efficiency target such as keeping CPA at or under $30. Every campaign follows it unless something more specific takes over.
- Per-campaign targets. Click + Target next to any campaign in the Campaign Automation list, pick CPA, ROAS, or one of your conversion actions, and give it a number. Campaigns beating their target get funded first, fully, before money moves to the ones falling behind. Campaigns without their own target keep following the account goal.
- Per-ad-set goal overrides on Meta Ads, so a single ad set can chase its own CPA or ROAS number.
A campaign without enough data holds steady. Pace never reads missing data as poor performance, so a young campaign isn't starved while it learns.
Note: Per-campaign targets and ad-set management are available on Pro plans and above.
Layer 3: rails
Rails put hard bounds on individual budgets. Three kinds apply:
- Your min/max rails — minimum and maximum daily budgets on a single Meta Ads ad set. The minimum stops Pace cutting that ad set below a level you set. The maximum stops it growing past one.
- Platform minimums — each ad platform's own smallest allowed daily budget. Pace never writes below them.
- Pace's built-in speed limit — on Daily Floor accounts, Pace moves each budget about 20% per check, compounding across the day's scheduled checks, so spend glides instead of lurching. Your daily floor, hard cap, and min/max rails always apply immediately and in full: if the floor is at risk, Pace lifts the speed limit and restores it in one move, and when you change your floor settings the next run repositions straight to them. Monthly Budget accounts have an equivalent cap on day-over-day movement. Changes that are too small to matter are held rather than written, so delivery isn't disturbed for noise.
To set min/max rails, hover over a Meta Ads campaign row, open the gear menu, choose Edit, then open the ad set's Pace rules section.
The account's envelope always wins. If a rail and the envelope pull in different directions, Pace follows the envelope and logs an incident on the change record, so the conflict shows up in your Changes tab.
Where to find each control
| Control | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Budget mode, monthly budget, floor settings | Account Settings → Budget tab |
| Campaign groups | Account Settings → Groups tab |
| Per-campaign targets | + Target in the Campaign Automation list |
| Ad-set rails and goal overrides (Meta Ads) | Campaign row gear menu → Edit → Pace rules |
| Rails at a glance | The badge next to an ad set's budget in the ad sets table (read-only) |
Common questions about budgets and pacing
Why can't I use campaign groups in Daily Floor mode?
Campaign groups aren't supported in Daily Floor mode yet. The floor is account-level: Pace holds one daily number across the whole account, so there's no monthly sub-envelope to carve out. Switch the account to Monthly Budget if you need groups.
What counts toward my plan's managed spend?
Your configured budgets, not your actual spend. A Monthly Budget account counts its monthly number. A Daily Floor account counts its floor multiplied by the days in the month.
Do efficiency targets change how much I spend?
No. Targets only change the split between campaigns. The envelope sets the total, and steering moves money around inside it.
What happens if an ad set's maximum conflicts with the account's daily floor?
The floor wins. Pace honours the account's envelope and logs an incident on the change, so you can see the conflict in your Changes tab. Resolve it by raising the ad set's maximum or lowering the floor.
Why did Pace move a budget gradually instead of all at once?
That's deliberate. On Daily Floor accounts, big single-day jumps reset the ad platform's delivery learning, and that reset costs you results while the algorithm finds its feet again. So Pace scales each budget in steps of roughly 20% per check and keeps stepping on the following runs until the budget settles at the right level. Each step is logged in your Changes tab as it lands. Your daily floor is never delayed by this: restoring it always happens in one move.