Reallocate Budget
The oxs-budget-reallocate skill guides the AI assistant through moving budget between line items of an OpenXDirect™ order. The assistant reads each line item’s budget, what it has spent so far, and how it is pacing. It then proposes a new split that keeps the order’s total budget the same, and shows you exactly where every number comes from. It applies changes only after you agree, and then checks each one, and reports the results.
OpenX has no single reallocate action. Each line item’s budget is changed on its own, and the order’s total budget is a hard ceiling. That is the reason why the assistant always lowers budgets before raising it.
When to Use It
- Move funds from line items that will not spend their budget to ones that are capped.
- Rebalance or reallocate an order’s budget.
- Give one line item more budget at the expense of another line item. For example, “Line items 3 and 5 are underspending and the rest are capped. Move the funds.”
To pause, resume, or make the same change across multiple line items, use Change Line Items in Bulk.
What You Need
- The order: by name or ID. Funds move inside one order only. If you do not name an order, the assistant asks for it rather than guessing.
- Which line items (optional): name the ones to take budget from and give to. If you do not name line items, the assistant picks line items based on pacing.
- Raising the order’s total (optional): only if you want to add new funds rather than move existing funds.
How It Works
- Find the order and its line items. Only active line items are part of the split. Paused, draft, finished and archived ones are listed for you but left out unless you name them.
- Check spend and pace. For each line item, the assistant looks at what it has spent so far, where it should currently be, and its last 7 days of spend. Line items that have not started yet, or have nothing to pace against, are left out unless you name them.
- Propose a split. The assistant identifies line items that are well behind pace as givers, and line items that are capped or running ahead as takers.
- Check that the takers can actually spend it. For each taker, it runs a forecast on extra funds over the days that are left. If the inventory is not there, funds would move from one underspender to another, so that specific line item is dropped and the assistant provides a reason.
- Show the plan and get approval. The assistant shows a table with each line item’s current budget, current spend, pace, proposed budget, the change, and the forecast result. Totals show that the order’s budget has not changed. Nothing moves until you confirm. If you adjust the split, it shows the plan again.
- Apply the changes, lowering budgets first. It first lowers the givers’ budgets and then raises the takers’, one line item at a time, because raising first would exceed the order’s budget and be refused.
- Check each result. It re-reads every changed line item to confirm that the new budget took effect.
Good to Know
| Rule | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The ceiling: active line item budgets cannot add up to more than the order’s budget. | Adding new funds means raising the order’s budget, which is its own step and needs its own approval. |
| The floor: a giver keeps at least what it has spent, plus about one more day of spend. | Setting a budget below what’s already been spent stops the line item immediately, and OpenX does not prevent this. |
| The spend cap moves with the budget. | A line item stops at its spend cap, not its budget. If a taker’s cap stays below its new budget, it won’t spend the extra, and the plan points this out. |
| Daily budgets cannot be higher than the total budget. | If a giver’s daily budget would exceed its new total, it is also lowered. |
- Forecast limits: the forecast does not account for frequency caps or day-parting, and the assistant tells you when a taker uses them. A forecast takes about 10 seconds per line item. If one times out, that row is reported as missing a forecast, you can then decide how to proceed.
- Spend figures run through yesterday. Current day spend is not yet included.
- Changes are not instant. A new budget starts its spend within about 15 minutes.
What You Get
A summary table with one row per line item: budget before and after, spend so far, the result (done, failed with the reason, or held because the decrease paying for it failed), and the forecast result for takers. Then a totals line comparing the active line item budgets before and after with the order’s budget, including any funds left unassigned.
If anything fails or is held back, the result is reported as partly applied, and never marked as done. The assistant only notifies you and you still need to decide how to proceed.
Safeguards
- Nothing moves until you confirm the plan.
- The order’s total budget is never raised without its own separate approval.
- No budget is set below what a line item has already spent.
- Funds are only given to line items whose forecast shows they can spend it.
- If a decrease fails, the increases it was paying for are held back rather than applied.
- Failed changes are reported, and not retried with different numbers.
Example Prompts
“Move budget from the underspending line items to the capped ones in the order Spring Launch.”
“Give line item 17 another $2,000 from line item 12.”
“Rebalance the budget across order 5678.”