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Rule type 2 of 4 · Budget rules

Weekends aren't weekdays. Your budget thinks they are.

Amazon gives every day of your week the same flat budget, starving the weekend that converts and overfeeding the Tuesday that doesn't. And when you do raise it by hand on Friday, someone has to remember Monday. Budget rules raise on a schedule and restore on a schedule. Checked every 15 minutes, logged every time.

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One account · rule off Weekend: starved

MonTueWedThuFriSatSun

+0%weekend budget Mon 6AMbudget restored 0forgotten restores

Setup time~90 seconds

Check frequencyEvery 15 minutes

RestoreAutomatic, every time

Price$149/mo flat, per seller

1 The problem

One number, seven different days.

Your daily budget is a single flat figure. Your week isn't. Conversion runs hot on weekends, cools midweek, spikes in the evening. Amazon applies the same number to all of it, and the console has no way to schedule a decrease.

Fri to Sun

When many categories do most of their weekly volume, while the daily budget sits exactly where somebody set it on a Tuesday.

2× the edits

The manual routine: raise it Friday, remember to lower it Monday, every single week. The raise is easy. The restore is the one that gets forgotten.

0 scheduled decreases

Amazon's console can raise a budget on a schedule. It cannot lower one. Down, the direction most waste lives in, is not an option.

Rule condition IF: it is [Friday 6:00 PM]
THEN: raise budgets to [weekend level] · restore [Monday 6:00 AM]

2 How it works

Set it once. Off Hours holds it.

Connect your account

One OAuth handshake through the official Amazon Ads API. Off Hours reads your campaigns, portfolios, and current budgets. Nothing is guessed.

Pick campaigns and set the window

Choose campaigns or a whole portfolio, then define the recurring window: Friday 6pm to Monday 6am, evenings only, any cadence that repeats. The window is the rule.

Set the budget change

A fixed amount or a percentage, up or down. When the window opens, budgets move; every original budget is recorded before anything changes.

It raises and restores itself

Off Hours checks every 15 minutes: raise on time, restore on time, every week. The restore is the product. Anyone can remember the raise. It's the Monday that gets forgotten.

One rule · repeats weekly

A month of weekends, on schedule.

Twenty-eight days under one budget rule. Every Saturday and Sunday raised, every Monday restored, with no calendar reminder anywhere in the building.

Base budget Raised for the weekend

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4

3 Why Off Hours

Budget rules exist elsewhere. Restores don't.

Amazon's console will raise a budget for you. What it won't do is bring it back down, schedule a decrease, or show you a clean log of what changed when. Off Hours builds the rule around the part everyone forgets: the way back.

Down, not just up

Amazon's native budget rules only go up. They can raise a budget on a schedule, but they can't lower one. Off Hours schedules decreases too, because most wasted budget is over-spend, not under-spend.

The restore is automatic

Every raise is written with a return ticket. When the window closes, the original budget comes back: logged, enforced, and never dependent on someone remembering it's Monday.

Flat price, not a cut of spend

$149/month per seller, whatever you spend. Tools priced as a percentage of ad spend earn more when you spend more. That incentive runs backwards.

Enforced every 15 minutes

A schedule is only as good as its enforcement. Off Hours re-checks every connected account four times an hour, weekends and holidays included.

Layers with three more rule types

Budget rules decide how much campaigns spend. Dayparting, event, and performance rules handle when they run, what's special, and what's wrong, without fighting each other.

A safety net under the schedule

Free spend alerts watch every connected account for spikes, drops, and drift, even the campaigns you never wrote a rule for.

How spend alerts work →

Layer it with dayparting.

Budget rules decide how much campaigns spend. Dayparting decides when they run at all. Most accounts run both.

See dayparting rules→

4 The alternative

How weekend budgets get managed today.

A calendar reminder to raise it Friday. A sticky note to lower it Monday. It holds up right until the one week it doesn't.

Off Hours

Raise and restore, both scheduled

✓Raises and restores on schedule. The rule carries its own way back
✓Runs every week automatically, holiday weekends included
✓Every change logged. Read exactly what moved, when, and back to what
✓Scales to every campaign and every connected Amazon account at once

Sticky notes & reminders

Someone edits budgets by hand, every Friday

✕The raise happens only if someone remembers to log in Friday evening
✕The Monday restore depends entirely on memory, and Mondays are busy
✕No record of what the budget was supposed to go back to
✕Doesn't scale past a handful of campaigns

5 Questions

Budget rules, answered.

What are Amazon Ads budget rules?

Budget rules raise or lower campaign budgets on a recurring schedule (weekends vs weekdays, evening peaks, any cadence that repeats) and automatically restore the original budget when the window ends. Instead of one flat daily number, your budget follows the actual shape of your week.

Can Amazon's native budget rules lower a budget?

No. Amazon's native budget rules only go up. They can raise a budget on a schedule or a performance trigger, but they can't lower one, and there's no unified log of what changed when. Off Hours schedules both directions, raises and decreases, with an automatic restore and a full audit log of every change.

What happens when a budget rule window ends?

The original budget comes back automatically. Off Hours records what every budget was before the rule touched it and restores it exactly when the window closes, then logs the change, so you can read precisely what moved and when. Deactivating a rule does the same: campaigns and budgets go back exactly as it found them.

What happens if I change a budget manually while a rule is active?

Your change wins. Off Hours treats manual edits as intent. If you set a budget by hand while a rule is running, the rule steps aside instead of overwriting you. Rules never fight the person who owns the account.

Can I combine budget rules with dayparting?

Yes, that's the common setup. Dayparting decides when a campaign runs, budget rules decide how much it can spend once it's on, and event and performance rules layer on top of both. All four rule types read the same account and don't conflict with each other by design.

Give your budget a calendar.

Build your first budget rule in about 90 seconds. 14 days free, no credit card required.

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