Strange account budget error

[Maxim]

One of the calls to updateBudget() returned this error:
"The budget cannot be lowered below the amount which has already been
spent"

What does it really mean and what's the remedy?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hello Maxim,

I don't have any special knowledge about that, but just based on the
text of the error, it sounds like you're trying to set a budget to X,
when more than X has already been spent. This would render the budget
meaningless, so AdWords won't let you make that change.

That's what it sounds like to me, at least.

Cheers,
-Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team

[Maxim]

>  I don't have any special knowledge about that, but just based on the
> text of the error, it sounds like you're trying to set a budget to X,
> when more than X has already been spent. This would render the budget
> meaningless, so AdWords won't let you make that change.

I fully understand the message of the error, but I think that the
correct behavior would be to just replace the budget.

Consider this scenario.

Say I planned to spend $100,000 over a period of the year. That's my
budget 1 which I set on January 1.
By July 1, same year, $60,000 and I want to set the budget to $10,000
over period of the year. $10K is less then $40k remaing and less then
$60k already spend. Why did you say the budget is meaningless?
What it means is that between January 1 and June 30 I wanted to spend
$100,000/year, but the new budget should be $10,000/year beginning
July 1.

An analogy I could use is a car insurance policy where you paid a
$3000 premium a year to get $500,000 coverage and regardless of
whether you made any claims with this insurance policy, if you later
lower your coverage to $100,000 your remaining monthly premium should
go down. Basically, you cancel the old policy and buy a new policy.
Same here, no?

Thanks,
Maxim

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hello Maxim,

Apologies, I assumed you were referring to campaign-level budgets
here, which is what the public AdWords API supports. I overlooked the
subject line of your message.

I'm not familiar with the details of how account-level budgets are
set and the possible errors that might be returned when setting them.
I'll refer your question to someone more familiar with that and let
you know.

Cheers,
-Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team