Daily Ad Spend Monitoring with Google Sheets and Slack Threshold Alerts

Description

This n8n workflow checks daily ad spend totals from a Google Sheet and sends a Slack alert if spend exceeds $100. It can be scheduled to run automatically or manually triggered for testing. This is perfect for marketing teams who want to monitor budget spikes in near real-time.

✅ Key Features

📥 Google Sheets Integration**: Pulls raw spend data from a shared spreadsheet.
📆 Scheduled or Manual Execution**: Can run daily on a schedule or manually for testing.
📈 Aggregates Spend**: Summarizes daily totals from raw data.
🧠 Logic Check**: Alerts only when spend exceeds a certain threshold.
🔔 Slack Alerts**: Sends instant notification to a specified channel.

🧰 What You'll Need

Google Cloud Project** with Sheets API enabled
OAuth2 Credential** for Google Sheets
Slack Bot Token** with permission to post to your workspace
Your Google Sheet link and tab name**

📎 Copy this Sample Google Sheet to Use:
Marketing Data Sheet - Copy Me

🔧 Step-by-Step Setup

1️⃣ Schedule or Manual Trigger
Node**: Schedule Workflow or Test Workflow
Purpose**: Either run daily via a cron-like rule or manually trigger the flow.

2️⃣ Get Google Sheet Data
Node**: Get Data
What it does**: Fetches all rows from your connected sheet.
Setup**:
Go to Google Cloud Console
Create a new project
Enable Google Sheets API
Create OAuth2 credentials for a desktop or web application
Connect your Google account in n8n via OAuth2
Grant access to the sheet you want to read (ensure it's shared with your OAuth email)
Use the copied sheet's link when connecting in n8n

3️⃣ Summarize Spend by Day
Node**: Sum spend by Day
What it does**: Groups the dataset by Date and sums the Spend ($) column
Requirements**:
Your sheet must have a header row with Date and Spend ($) as columns

4️⃣ Sort by Most Recent Date
Node**: Sort Dates Descending
What it does**: Sorts all entries by the Date field so that the most recent day is first
Custom JavaScript**:
const items = $input.all();
items.sort((a, b) => new Date(b.json.Date) - new Date(a.json.Date));
return items;

5️⃣ Select Top Result
Node**: Keep only Last Day
What it does**: Captures the top row (most recent day) for evaluation
Fields**: Sets only Date and sum_Spend_($) to keep things clean

6️⃣ Check Spend Threshold
Node**: Check if Spend over $100
What it does**: Uses an IF node to compare sum_Spend_($) against a 100 threshold
Logic**:
sum_Spend_($) > 100

7️⃣ Send Slack Notification
Node**: Send Slack Message
What it does**: Sends a message to a Slack channel if the threshold is exceeded
Setup**:
Go to Slack API
Create a new app
Enable chat:write and channels:read scopes under OAuth & Permissions
Install the app to your workspace
Copy the OAuth Token into your Slack credentials in n8n
Select your target channel from the dropdown (must be public or the bot must be invited)
Message**:
The spend for the most recent day is over $100
8️⃣ No Action if Under Budget
Node**: Do Nothing. Under 100
Purpose**: This path simply ends the flow with no action if spend is below the threshold

👤 Created By
Robert Breen
Automation Consultant | AI Workflow Designer | n8n Expert
📧 [email protected]
🌐 ynteractive.com
🔗 LinkedIn

🏷️ Tags
slack marketing automation budget alert daily schedule google sheets threshold logic n8n spend tracking data summarization