GA4 Audit Checklist: 14 Checks From Our Client Audits

A GA4 audit checklist tells you whether the numbers in Google Analytics 4 describe what actually happened on your site. Most GA4 properties we audit report data confidently. Fewer report it correctly.

This is the checklist we run, grouped in four areas, with what each check found in named client audits. If you want your property set up or repaired, our GA4 and GTM setup service covers it.

How to use this checklist for a GA4 audit

Work through the checks in order: property settings, then collection, then ecommerce, then reconciliation. Each area depends on the one before it.

#	Area	Check	Passes when
1	Settings	Time zone and currency	They match your store or CRM
2	Settings	Data retention	Event data kept 14 months
3	Settings	Internal traffic	Your team’s visits are filtered, tested before activation
4	Settings	Unwanted referrals	Payment processors cannot take credit for sales
5	Settings	Cross-domain	One visitor across your domains counts once
6	Collection	One GA4 source per page	Only one tag sends each event
7	Collection	Consent persists	Accepted consent survives page changes
8	Collection	Readable event names	Each event says what happened
9	Collection	Key events marked	Business actions are key events
10	Ecommerce	One purchase per order	A test order sends one purchase with a transaction ID
11	Ecommerce	Purchase value	Value includes exactly what you decided, such as tax
12	Ecommerce	Funnel parameters	Items, value and currency on each funnel event
13	Links	Google Ads link	Linked to the right Google Ads account
14	Reconciliation	Backend comparison	GA4 sits close to, and not above, real orders

Record each check as pass or fail, with the evidence. A failed reconciliation in check 14 usually traces back to an earlier check.

Checks 1 to 5: property settings

Property settings decide how GA4 stores and labels every event, so they come first.

Check 1, time zone and currency. The reporting time zone and currency should match your store or CRM. Otherwise daily totals will never line up when you reconcile.

Check 2, data retention. GA4 lets you keep event data for 2 or 14 months in a standard property (Analytics Help). Retention does not affect standard reports, but explorations cannot show data older than the setting. Set it to 14 months unless you have a reason not to.

Check 3, internal traffic. Visits from your own team inflate sessions and test conversions. GA4 can filter traffic by IP address with a data filter, but Google warns that an applied filter is permanent (Analytics Help). Test it before activating it.

Check 4, unwanted referrals. Payment processors that send shoppers back to your site can take credit for the sale. Google lists third-party payment processors as a typical case for its unwanted referrals setting (Analytics Help).

Check 5, cross-domain measurement. If a visitor moves between your own domains, such as a site and a separate checkout, configure cross-domain measurement. Without it, Google says a single user visiting different domains is counted as more than one (Analytics Help).

Checks 6 to 9: what GA4 collects

Collection checks ask whether each event fires once, for the right reason, with a name someone can read.

Check 6, one GA4 source per page. List every place a GA4 tag can come from: the theme, plugins, a Google tag and a GTM container. At Toolab, three sources sent GA4 events at once. Removing them took add to cart from 154 to 75 per 1,000 visits, roughly half.

Check 7, consent persists. Accept the banner, move to a second page and read the consent states. At Toolab, the consent state reset to denied on every page after the first. GA4 ecommerce tags were blocked even for visitors who had accepted.

Check 8, readable event names. Every important event needs a name that says what happened. Killian’s HVAC’s phone call event carried the Tag Manager internal name gtm.linkClick. Phone calls could not be told apart from other clicks.

Check 9, key events marked. A key event is an event you mark as important to the business. GA4 then reports it in its own column (Analytics Help). The same Killian’s HVAC property had no key events marked at all.

Checks 10 to 12: ecommerce events

In a GA4 ecommerce tracking audit, these checks matter most, because bidding and revenue reports rely on purchase value.

Check 10, one purchase per order. Place a test order and confirm one purchase event arrives with a transaction ID. Google marks the transaction ID as required for purchases (Google for Developers). At Toolab, GA4 recorded 3,330 purchase events against 3,220 store orders in June. After the fix, a test period showed 251 events for 250 orders.

Check 11, what the purchase value includes. Decide whether value should include tax and shipping, then check it does exactly that. At Toolab, VAT and shipping were included in the purchase value. Together with the duplicates, GA4 reported 6,986,770 SEK of June revenue against 5,027,143 SEK of real sales, 39% higher.

Check 12, parameters on funnel events. View item, add to cart and begin checkout should carry items, value and currency. At Vegepod, GA4 captured those three events with their ecommerce parameters, which our review verified; purchase could not be tested from outside.

We cover the store side in how to set up GA4 ecommerce tracking on WooCommerce.

$3M+in phantom revenue from duplicate purchases, reported to the ad platforms over two yearsRead the Toolab case study →

Checks 13 and 14: links and reconciliation

The last two checks compare GA4 with the systems around it. They are where earlier faults become visible.

Check 13, the Google Ads link. Confirm the property is linked to the right Google Ads account. The link lets you build Google Ads conversions from key events and re-engage visitors (Analytics Help). A link to an old or wrong account sends nothing useful.

Check 14, reconcile with your backend. Compare a month of GA4 purchases or leads with your store or CRM, by date. Orbital Clothing’s GA4 recorded 805 purchases, about 65% of its 1,240 Shopify orders, close to what Meta saw. Two separate systems agreeing pointed to consent and blocking, not a broken tag.

A gap above your real orders means duplicates; a gap below means loss. The two need different fixes. We explain the differences between platforms in why GA4 and Google Ads conversions don’t match.

What to fix first

Fix in the order that protects the most decisions. Duplicate purchases and wrong values come first, because bidding and revenue reports use them every day.

1. Duplicates and purchase value (checks 6, 10 and 11).
2. Consent persistence (check 7), because it silently removes data.
3. Key events and names (checks 8 and 9), so reports say what happened.
4. Settings (checks 1 to 5), which mostly protect future data.

Then reconcile again a week after each fix. Our conversion tracking audit checklist covers the same work from the ad platform side.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to do an audit checklist?

To build an audit checklist, list what must be true, then write one test for each item that someone else could repeat. For GA4, that means checks for property settings, event collection, ecommerce and reconciliation. Record pass or fail with evidence for each, then fix the failures that affect the most decisions first.

Sources (9)

All checked on 15 October 2026.

1. Analytics Help, Data retention
2. Analytics Help, Filter out internal traffic
3. Analytics Help, Identify unwanted referrals
4. Analytics Help, Set up cross-domain measurement
5. Analytics Help, About key events
6. Analytics Help, Connect Google Ads to Google Analytics
7. Google for Developers, Measure ecommerce
8. BlazeByte client audit reports, named with permission: Toolab (May to July 2026) and Killian’s HVAC (25 July 2026).
9. BlazeByte client audit reports, named with permission: Vegepod (June 2026) and Orbital Clothing (1 July 2026).