Confirm you hold an admin role, not just a working login
Taking over a Google Ads account is really a reassignment of access and billing; the account ID stays the same. Under Admin, in the access and security page, confirm your own Google account has the Admin role rather than Standard or Read-only. Then check whether the account sits under the seller's or a former agency's manager account. If it does, that link has to be removed, or they keep visibility and control from above. If the handover is just a login tied to someone else's phone, recovery email and 2-step verification, the rest of the checks do not matter, because you can lose access at any time. Menu names follow whatever the interface shows at the time.
Split the billing check into debt, profile ownership and unbilled spend
Open the Billing summary and look for an outstanding balance, declined payments, or a notice that serving is paused over payment. Treat three things separately. First, any amount already billed and unpaid should be cleared by the current holder before handover. Second, the payments profile is its own object with its own users and payment methods; find out who administers it, replace the payment method with one you control, and make sure the old card is gone. Third, spend that has accrued but not yet been charged: on threshold or monthly billing, usage from the handover period can be charged later, so reconcile the billing cycle after the switch. If the account uses monthly invoicing, that credit line was granted to the original advertiser and should not be assumed to transfer. If the payments profile cannot be put in your hands, stop.
Account-level and ad-level restrictions are different problems
Check the status notices on the account overview and the Policy manager under Tools. A disapproved or limited ad concerns a specific ad, keyword or landing page, and can be edited and resubmitted. An account suspension, such as for payment issues, unacceptable business practices or circumvention of systems, sits at account level; appeals turn on the advertiser's identity, and a new holder does not clear it. Also compare the business name and website domain registered in the account with what you will actually advertise, since policy decisions follow the advertiser and landing pages, not how old the account ID is. As a rule: an account-level suspension or open appeal means do not proceed; a few disapprovals clustered in a category your business does not touch are acceptable.
Verify the conversion tag sits on a site you control
In Goals, open the conversions summary and read each action's status (recording, no recent conversions, inactive, needs attention), its source (website, app, import, call) and whether it is a primary action. Then confirm three things: the Google tag or GTM container runs on a domain you control; you know who owns the linked GA4 property or Firebase project; and conversion value and attribution settings fit your business. If the conversion actions were recording on the seller's own site, the history is reference only. You will need to create new actions and start measuring again, because old tracking does not record conversions for your site just because the account changed hands.
Account history is worth what carries over, not how old it is
Smart Bidding leans on conversion data. If the actions can continue (same domain, intact tags, same primary conversion), the history has real reference value. If you must change the primary conversion or the domain, it is effectively a cold start and account age adds little. Use Change history to review recent edits to budgets, bid strategies, final URLs and payment methods, and look for abrupt large changes. Do not pay a premium for an old account unless you can name which dataset it carries forward.
Three gates, and when to walk away
Gate one is access: you are Admin, and both the parent manager account and the payments profile can be handed to you. Gate two is billing: no balance owed or it is settled, and the payment method can be replaced with yours. Gate three is status and tracking: no account-level restriction, and conversion tags verifiably recording on your own domain. If any one fails, the risk of continuing usually exceeds the cost of opening a fresh account. Policies, interfaces and review processes change, so rely on Google Ads' current help pages and your account console. A handover should never be used to get around a prior suspension or verification requirement, and that is outside what this article covers.