How to Add Someone to Google Ads Manager

To add someone to your Google Ads account, sign in as an Admin, open the Admin menu, go to Access and security, select the plus button, enter the person’s email address, choose an access level and select Send invitation. If “manager” means an agency’s Google Ads manager account, the process runs the other way: the agency sends a link request from its manager account using your customer ID, and an Admin on your account accepts it under Access and security on the Managers tab. Both procedures below follow Google Ads Help as it read on November 7, 2026, and the menus have moved more than once, so older guides that mention a wrench icon or a “Setup” column are out of date.

Which manager do you mean?

The word “manager” covers several different things in Google’s products, and the right steps depend on which one you mean. When this search was checked from Calgary on November 7, 2026, the first result was the help page for Google Ad Manager, although Google Ad Manager is a separate product that publishers use to sell ad space on their own sites, with its own user settings. Most business owners asking this question want one of the first two rows below.

An agency can use either of the first two routes. A user invitation gives one named person access to your account, while a manager account link lets the agency’s manager account users work in your account from their own dashboard, which is why agencies tend to ask for it: Google describes a manager account as a single sign-in for all of an agency’s client accounts.

How to add a user to your Google Ads account

You need Admin access to send an invitation, because Google’s permission chart reserves giving account access and changing access levels for Admin users. If you are not sure whether your business has an account at all, or under which email address it was opened, check whether you already have one first, so that you do not open a second account by accident and split your billing and history. Then follow Google’s steps:

1. Sign in to Google Ads and open the Admin menu.
2. Go to Access and security and select the plus button.
3. Enter the invitee’s email address and choose an access level. The address must belong to a Google Account, or the person must create one, so ask for the address they actually sign in with rather than a shared inbox.
4. Select Send invitation.

The person accepts through the link in Google’s email, and you receive a notification in the account once they do. Until then the invitation sits as pending, and you can withdraw it with Revoke in the Actions column. Google also lets an invitee accept with an alternate email address listed on their Google Account, in which case they sign in with their main Google Account password and appear in Access and security under both addresses.

Which access level to give

Google now lists five access levels: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. Many guides still describe four, leaving out Billing, and several repeat the idea that Standard users cannot touch billing. Google’s own chart shows otherwise, since Standard users can view and edit billing information as well as edit campaigns. What Standard cannot do is manage people: only Admin users can give or remove access, change access levels, accept or reject manager account link requests, unlink manager accounts, add or remove product links, or link the account to Google Analytics to import conversions. Standard and Read-only users can grant Email-only access, but nothing more.

Two details from Google’s chart are worth knowing before you choose. A Read-only user can see billing information, including what the account spends, so share exported reports instead if spend should stay private. And Google warns that an account with only one administrator can lose access to its tags if that person becomes unavailable, so adding a second Admin from inside the business is a sensible safeguard. The details of giving access to an SEO company, including why Read-only is usually enough, are covered separately.

How to link your account to an agency’s manager account

A manager account, still often called an MCC after its old name, My Client Center, is a separate Google Ads account that lets an agency or a multi-account business view and manage many accounts from one place. Google is clear that it is not an upgrade of an ordinary account but a new account created for that purpose. Linking is started by the manager account, so the agency needs your customer ID, the unique number Google assigns to every Google Ads account. On its side, following Google’s linking steps, the agency signs in to the manager account, selects the Accounts icon and then Sub-account settings, selects the plus button, chooses Link existing account, enters your customer ID, selects Preview to check the request and then selects Send Request.

On your side, any Admin on the account receives an email invitation, and can accept it straight from the email or from inside the account. In Google Ads, open the Admin menu, go to Access and security and select the Managers tab, where pending requests are listed under “Link request”. In the Actions column, choose Accept or Decline and follow the instructions on the page. Check that the manager account’s name matches the agency you hired before you accept, since a link gives that manager account’s users access to your campaigns.

Linking changes less than many owners fear. Google says the client account keeps its history, its sign-in and its users’ permissions, and that billing and payment methods stay as they were unless consolidated billing is set up. Your own users also cannot see into the agency’s manager account or its other clients. Google does set a few limits that explain the errors people sometimes meet: an account cannot be directly managed by more than five manager accounts, a manager account can be directly managed by only one other manager account, and an account cannot be linked to more than one manager account in the same hierarchy.

Ownership: the setting that matters most after linking

When an agency links to an existing account, its manager account does not become the owner by default, and an Admin on the client account has to turn ownership on. Ownership is a real step up. Admin users on an owner manager account can invite users with administrative access to the client account, remove users, grant or revoke administrative access, accept or decline link requests from other managers, unlink other managers and adjust the account’s security settings. A client account can have only one owner, and ownership passes up the hierarchy to every manager above the owner.

Google’s own advice, on its page about client account ownership, is that a manager should be made owner “if and only if” the manager account needs those privileges, and that is a good rule for a small business to follow. Most day-to-day campaign work does not need it, and Google notes that some tasks, such as monthly invoicing or a credit line application, do call for manager account ownership. If you do grant it, the client account still owns its data and can remove the owner at any time by unlinking. To turn it on, open the Admin menu, go to Access and security, select Managers and set the Owner column to Yes for that manager.

Adding someone to a manager account itself

If you are the one with the manager account, perhaps because you run an agency or because your business has several Google Ads accounts, adding a colleague works the same way as on an ordinary account but happens inside the manager account. Sign in to the manager account, open the Admin menu, go to Access and security, select the plus button, enter the person’s email address, choose one of the five access levels (Admin, Standard, Read-only, Billing or Email-only) and select Send invitation. The invitee appears under “Pending invitations” until they accept, and Google notes that if the invite link does not work, the invitee can try a private browsing window, and if they still cannot accept, you can cancel the invitation and send a new one.

Two rules from Google’s help catch people out here. You can grant access only up to your own level, so only an Admin can create another Admin. And when you need to change users on a client account that is linked to your manager account, Google suggests signing in to that client account directly, especially if your manager account is not its owner, because without ownership a manager account can only invite Standard, Read-only or Email-only users and switch people between Standard and Read-only, while adding or removing Admin users needs ownership or a direct sign-in to the client account. Google also limits a single email address to 20 Google Ads accounts, manager accounts included, which is one reason a business with many accounts is better served by a manager account than by a long list of separate logins.

Removing access and unlinking a manager

Access is easy to take back, which is part of why it is reasonable to grant it in the first place. To remove a user, open the Admin menu, go to Access and security, find the person and select Remove access in the Actions column. To change someone’s level, hover over their current level in the “Access level” column and pick a new one from the arrow that appears. To unlink an agency’s manager account, go to Access and security, open the Managers sub-page, find the manager account, select Remove access and confirm with Unlink after reviewing the preview Google shows.

Unlinking needs Admin access on the account, so a greyed-out Unlink option often means the signed-in user is not an Admin, and Google also blocks an unlink that would leave the account without any admin user or owner. If linking fails with a “maximum number of managers” or hierarchy error, the account has usually hit one of the limits described earlier, such as five direct managers for an ordinary account or one for a manager account, or is already linked elsewhere in the same hierarchy. Google’s page on manager linking and unlinking errors matches each error message to its fix. When an agency relationship ends, a short check keeps the account under the business’s control:

• Your own Admin login uses an address the business controls, ideally a company email rather than a former employee’s personal one.
• At least two people inside the business have Admin access.
• Former agencies, freelancers and employees are removed from the Users list, and old manager accounts are unlinked on the Managers tab.
• Any manager account you still work with has ownership only if it needs it.
• Your customer ID and the business-controlled email addresses with Admin access are written down somewhere safe.

Getting help with Google Ads access

Adding someone to Google Ads comes down to three choices: invite a person or accept an agency’s manager account link, give the lowest access level that lets them do the job, and decide deliberately whether a manager account should become the owner. If you are bringing in outside help and want a second opinion on which access to give, or you would like to talk to someone who manages your Google Ads campaigns day to day, SEO Company To-The-TOP! is a Calgary SEO and Google Ads firm, founded in 2007 and Google Ads certified, that offers Google Ads management for businesses in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and across Alberta and British Columbia. Call (403) 308-5949 to talk it through.