The header follows the payments profile, not the login
Google Ads documents take their header from the payments profile attached to the account: legal name, address and any tax ID entered there. Admin access and who edits budgets have no bearing on it. If the profile stays untouched after you take over, new documents keep the previous entity's name even when you have replaced the card. The cardholder's name and the invoice header are separate things, so confirm each one on its own.
Split pre-handover spend with a cutoff date
Ads are consumed first and charged or invoiced later, which is where timing mismatches come from. Automatic payments are charged at a threshold or on a set date, while monthly invoicing usually produces one document after month end. In both cases, spend before and after the handover can land on one document. Agree a cutoff date in advance and ask the outgoing party to keep the spend report and the latest statement for that date. Unpaid amounts before the cutoff stay with the previous payer, and anything after belongs to you. Put it in writing.
Past invoices usually are not rewritten when the profile changes
When the name, address or tax ID in the payments profile is edited, documents already issued generally keep the details they were created with. Whether a reissue or correction is possible depends on the process and conditions Google offers at that time, so do not assume it is. Plan accordingly: if your finance team needs a specific period invoiced to your own company, fix the profile before that period begins instead of planning to patch it afterwards.
Three handover setups lead to three header outcomes
If you only change who operates the account and leave the profile alone, new documents keep the old header. That suits a short-term managed arrangement where both sides accept it. If you move the account to a payments profile or billing setup you created yourself, documents for new billing periods follow the new profile while earlier ones stay as they were, so reconciliation has to be done in two segments. If the account sits under a manager account that handles billing centrally, the header may reflect the billing entity rather than the account that ran the ads. Check the billing settings and the page as shown at that time. The difference is not about effort, it is about whose name ends up on the invoice.
Verify with the first new document before scaling spend
After changing the profile, do not raise budgets yet. Wait for the first document of a new billing period in the Billing documents area, then check four fields: name, address, tax ID and currency. If all four are right, scale up. If the old entity still appears or the tax ID is missing, keep daily budgets at a level you can absorb while you work out whether the change has not taken effect or the account is linked to the wrong profile. A small amount of spend before verification is far easier to handle than a full month invoiced under the wrong header.
Situations where you should pause before taking over
If your reimbursement or bookkeeping requires a specific company on the invoice, and the account's payments profile cannot be changed to that entity or needs cooperation you cannot confirm from the current owner, taking over directly is a poor fit. Another stop signal is an outstanding balance that nobody can attribute to a period or a payer. Such accounts tie billing to two parties, and the reconciliation cost often exceeds the cost of a new account with a clean header. Before ordering, ask the seller to state the current payments profile entity, the billing method and the status of the latest statement.