I had an eCom client where GA4 looked perfect: purchase events fired, conversions tracked, dashboards clean. Management monitored profits, checked ROI — all seemed fine.
Then we compared GA4 to actual payments from CRM and the payment processor — and found 20–30% of real transactions missing.
GA4 was silent. The dashboard looked great. But the reality didn’t match.
Wow...
GA4 isn’t a financial system. It doesn’t track payment — only that an event fired.
Why purchases may go missing:
• User closed the tab before the thank-you page loaded,
• Script or tag errors,
• AdBlock or unstable connection,
• Payment succeeded, but the event never triggered.
GA4 thinks the purchase didn’t happen — even though money came in. And then that flawed data is used to decide spend, revenue, ROAS.
And you know... 20–30% revenue gap isn’t a bug. It’s strategic blindness.
Because of this, the client:
• Had skewed unit economics and ROAS.
• Overvalued some traffic sources.
• Shifted budgets toward underperformers.
They trusted GA4 — and lost money optimizing for the wrong data.
If we hadn’t reconciled with CRM and payment logs, they’d still be making costly decisions.
Now I always implement payment validation — regardless of platform.
Here’s what I do:
• Send server-side purchase events from CRM or payment gateway.
• Track event delivery, not just trigger.
• Treat GA4 as a visualization layer — not the source of truth.
If you're calculating ROI, PnL, or revenue — don’t rely on GA4. Use systems that actually see the money.
Because a pretty graph doesn't mean you're making a profit.
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