Taking on a new client's GA4 account is one of the highest-risk moments in an agency relationship. You inherit whatever configuration decisions — good and bad — were made before you arrived. If you don't audit the property before your first report, you're potentially presenting data that's been broken for months without knowing it. This is the checklist we use before doing anything else with a new client's GA4 property.
Step 1: Access & Permissions Audit
- Confirm you have Editor or Administrator access at the property level, not just account level
- Review all current users — flag anyone who shouldn't have access, especially former employees or agencies
- Check service account access if the property is connected to Looker Studio, BigQuery, or third-party tools
- Confirm Google Ads is linked (if running paid campaigns) and the link is active
- Check Search Console link status
Step 2: Property Configuration Baseline
- Data retention: Change to 14 months immediately if still at the 2-month default — data lost cannot be recovered
- Timezone: Confirm it matches the client's primary business location, not UTC
- Currency: Verify it's set to the client's billing currency
- Industry category: Set correctly for benchmarking
- Reporting Identity: Document the current setting and assess whether thresholding is affecting reports
Step 3: Data Streams & Tag Verification
- Verify the web data stream is active and showing recent data
- Check for duplicate data streams — properties sometimes have both a legacy stream and a new one both collecting
- Confirm the measurement ID in the tag matches the active data stream
- Audit Enhanced Measurement settings — auto-tracked events like scroll and outbound clicks may or may not be desired
- Verify internal traffic filter is configured and active
- Check referral exclusion list includes payment processors
Step 4: Event Tracking Quality Check
- Review all conversion events — confirm each one is actually firing with recent data
- Check for "zombie" conversions — events marked as conversions that haven't fired in 30+ days
- Validate purchase events include required parameters:
transaction_id,value,currency,itemsarray - Check for duplicate event firing — particularly on purchase confirmation pages
- Review custom dimensions and metrics for accuracy
Step 5: Privacy & Compliance Check
- Verify Consent Mode v2 is implemented if the client has EEA traffic
- Confirm all 4 consent signals are firing with correct default states
- Check that IP anonymization settings are appropriate for the client's market
- Verify Google Signals is configured appropriately given the client's privacy requirements
Automate the Entire Checklist
Manually running through all 47 checks above takes an experienced analyst 4–8 hours per property. For agencies onboarding multiple clients, this is not sustainable. GA4 Health Check's automated audit runs the complete onboarding checklist — all 7 modules, 47 checks — in under 60 seconds and produces a client-ready PDF report you can present on day one.
Our comprehensive GA4 audit checklist covers every check above in detail. For agencies, our Audit Pack option lets you run multiple audits at a reduced per-audit cost. See pricing →
