This page covers the money side of ChatGPT Ads after the advertiser exists: what the prepayment buys, how to read the Funding status on the ChatGPT Ads card, and what Soku does automatically when the balance runs low. For the setup path itself (Stripe Checkout, advertiser creation, Pixel installation), see Getting started with ChatGPT Ads.

What the prepayment buys

Soku prepays 15 days of the target daily budget. With the default $25 daily minimum, the suggested advertising deposit is $375, and a $100 daily budget creates a $1,500 one. Stripe also adds the processing surcharge estimate shown before Checkout; that surcharge is not part of the spendable advertising balance.

Refunds and disputes adjust the advertising principal but do not delete an advertiser that has already been created.

Read Funding status

Open Integrations → ChatGPT Ads in the Brand and open the setup dialog. It shows:

confirmed advertising principal;
total spend and available budget — the spend is the same figure your ChatGPT Ads reports show, so the two never disagree;
spend-data freshness, which is the time of the last completed ChatGPT Ads metrics sync;
ready, low, insufficient, stale, or unknown Funding status.

A stale or unknown status means Soku cannot currently prove a fresh balance. It does not mean the balance is zero. Use the displayed timestamp and contact support if the status does not recover; do not treat an old value as current.

Asking Soku in chat for the balance returns the same available budget and Funding status as the setup dialog. That balance is the advertising funding ledger, not your Soku subscription or credit balance.

Balance protection

Soku's spend monitor checks every funded ChatGPT Ads advertiser about every 30 minutes. It recalculates the available budget from the funding ledger (confirmed principal minus the spend Soku has synced for the advertiser) and acts on it automatically:

When the available budget reaches $0 or below, Soku pauses the advertiser's active campaigns.
When a payment tops the available budget back up, Soku does not resume the campaigns it paused. It notifies you instead, and you resume the campaigns you want to keep running.
When the available budget is above $0 but covers less than seven days of the active campaigns' daily budgets, Soku sends a low-balance notification.

This protection runs in the background and needs no setup. Chat automations (monitors) evaluate spend and performance metrics only; they do not watch the advertising balance, because the built-in protection already does.

Top up

To add budget, use the Funding action on the Integrations → ChatGPT Ads card again. Only an Organization Admin can create a new Stripe Checkout; other Brand members can view Funding status but cannot pay. Returning from Stripe does not itself confirm payment — wait for the card to leave Payment processing before starting another Checkout.