GA4 Audit in E-commerce Setup: How to Ensure Your Revenue Reports Are Accurate?

According to Analytics Mania, over 80% of GA4 accounts have incorrect or incomplete event tracking.

That means most e-commerce stores are making revenue decisions based on flawed data. Imagine your store showing ₹5,00,000 in sales on your backend, but GA4 reports only ₹3,20,000. That gap can compromise your ROI analysis, misguide your ad spend, and lead you to believe your best campaigns aren’t working.

That’s when turning to a focused Google Analytics audit for e-commerce becomes critical. Conducting a proper web analytics audit ensures that your GA4 eCommerce setup is functioning correctly, your eCommerce tracking setup in GA4 captures every sale, and your GA4 revenue tracking accurately reflects real revenue.

Let’s break down why accurate revenue data matters, where most setups go wrong, and how to fix them through a structured GA4 conversion tracking audit.

Importance of Accurate Revenue Tracking

Accurate revenue tracking fuels better insights, sharper strategies, and more confident decisions.

• A correct GA4 revenue tracking setup ensures every purchase, refund, and transaction is recorded precisely.
• It directly impacts how you allocate ad budgets, measure ROI, and forecast growth.
• A small underreporting of even 5–10% in GA4 can result in misjudging campaign performance worth thousands of dollars per month.
• A thorough Google Analytics audit enables you to identify broken tags, missing purchase events, and untracked payment pages before they skew your KPIs.

Common GA4 Revenue Tracking Issues in E-commerce

When you dig into e-commerce revenue tracking in GA4, you’ll often find recurring issues. Here are some of the most common GA4 tracking issues:

1. Missing or misnamed events: GA4 uses an event-based model, and for revenue to appear correctly, you must send the correct event (e.g., the purchase event) with the proper parameters. If you use a non-standard event name (e.g., order_success instead of purchase), Google Analytics 4 (GA4) won’t count it as a transaction.
   
2. Missing required parameters (value, currency, transaction_id, items, etc.): Even if the event fires, if key parameters are missing, revenue will be zero or skewed. GA4’s own documentation calls this out. For example, sending “value”: “$100.00” instead of 100.00 (numeric) will cause issues.
3. Duplicate events & inflated metrics: Especially for events such as “add_to_cart” and “begin_checkout”, incorrect tracking can result in duplicates or inflated counts, which interfere with conversion rate calculations and revenue attribution.
   
4. Data layer or GTM misconfigurations: Many issues can be traced back to how the data layer is populated and how tags fire (via Google Tag Manager or gtag.js). If the data layer lacks required fields or the tag fires too early/late, you’ll lose or misrecord data.
   
5. Cross-domain issues / internal traffic/consent blocking / ad-blockers
   When e-commerce flows span multiple domains or platforms (e.g., checkout on a sub-domain), if cross-domain tracking isn’t set correctly, revenue can be mis-attributed. Also, consent modes or ad-blockers can prevent events from firing or being recorded.
   
6. Misalignment between the store backend and GA4 data: Sometimes your store says “100 orders, ₹500,000 revenue,” but GA4 shows 80 orders and ₹420,000. That discrepancy needs investigation: is GA4 missing some events? Are some orders not getting tracked? Are there filters affecting the data?
   

Understanding these issues is the first step in performing a proper audit of your GA4 e-commerce tracking.

Step-by-Step GA4 Audit Process for E-commerce

Here’s a structured GA4 audit process (a Google Analytics audit) tailored for e-commerce, focusing primarily on e-commerce tracking setup in GA4, GA4 revenue tracking, and a GA4 conversion tracking audit. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Verify property & data streams

• Confirm you have the correct GA4 property set up for your e-commerce site.
• In GA4: Admin → Data Streams → ensure your Web stream is correctly configured.
• Check that Enhanced Measurement is enabled (though for pure e-commerce, you’ll likely send custom events anyway).
• Confirm measurement ID is installed correctly on the site (via GTM or gtag.js).
  

Step 2: Review e-commerce events setup

• Confirm you’re sending the recommended e-commerce events for GA4: view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, add_payment_info, purchase, etc.
• For each event, check the parameters being sent: e.g., transaction_id, value, currency, items array with item_id or item_name, price, quantity.
• Use DebugView (GA4 → Configure → DebugView) or GTM Preview mode to simulate a transaction and see what fires and what data is sent.
• Check for duplicate events: high “event count per user” might signal duplicates.
  

Step 3: Audit revenue tracking

• Specifically for GA4 revenue tracking: ensure the purchase event is named exactly “purchase”. Other names will not register in standard e-commerce reports.
• Validate that value is numeric (no currency symbol), currency is ISO 3-letter string (e.g., “INR”, “USD”), and transaction_id is unique per order.
• Check item-level revenue: Ensure the price parameter is present for each item and is of the correct type.
• Compare revenue in GA4 to the actual order revenue in your store's backend (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce) over sample periods, such as daily or weekly. Any gap warrants investigation.
  

Step 4: Audit conversion tracking & attribution

• Review all major conversion events (not just purchases): e.g., sign-ups, leads, newsletter subscriptions (if applicable). Ensure these are set up correctly (as part of your web analytics audit).
• In GA4, check key events (admin - data display - events - key events) to ensure that key events (like purchase) are marked as conversions.
• Review attribution and channel reporting: ensure your marketing channels are correctly attributed (check UTM tagging, cross-domain settings).
• In an e-commerce setup, check funnel drop-off: from product view → add to cart → checkout → purchase. Use Explorations or Funnel reports.
• Filter out internal traffic, test traffic, bots – otherwise you’re skewing your conversion numbers.
  

Step 5: Data quality & governance checks

• Filter internal traffic (e.g., your own team).
• Confirm cross-domain tracking if you use multiple domains (e.g., store.example.com + checkout.example.com).
• Review if any consent/opt-out mechanisms block tracking, and consider server-side tagging or other alternative methods if needed.
• Verify the date/time settings, currency settings, and time zone alignment between the store backend and the GA4 property.
• Set up periodic data quality reviews, such as monthly checks, to ensure revenue counts correlate and sample purchases are audited.

Step 6: Reporting & monitoring

• In GA4: go to Reports → Monetization → E-commerce purchases. Confirm you see revenue, number of purchases, item revenue, etc. Review trends and anomalies.
• Create custom dashboards or explorations to track key metrics over time, such as revenue per user, purchase rate, average order value, or revenue by channel or product category.
• Set up alerts: e.g., if revenue drops by more than 20% month-on-month, or if purchase events decrease by a significant %, you will be flagged to investigate.
• Document your setup: tag names, data layer schema, event parameter expectations, business rules for correct tracking. Treat it as part of your ongoing audit/tracking governance.

Conclusion

A strong GA4 audit for your e-commerce setup isn’t optional—it’s foundational to trusting your analytics. When you’ve set up your GA4 eCommerce setup correctly, ensured your eCommerce tracking setup in GA4 fires the right events with the correct parameters, and validated your GA4 revenue tracking and GA4 conversion tracking audit work end-to-end, you gain clarity. You gain confidence. And most importantly, you make decisions backed by reliable data. Start with the steps above, fix the glaring issues, and turn your analytics from “maybe accurate” to “trusted volume”. Because when you see accurate numbers, you can act with conviction.