The reconciliation routine for when GA4 and Stripe disagree

The reconciliation routine for when GA4 and Stripe disagree

An ecommerce store's GA4 reported $312k for the month. Stripe showed $389k. Finance trusted neither. The 20% gap had to be closed before anyone believed a single report.

The reconcile playbook:
— Pull GA4 purchase revenue and Stripe net for the identical date range and timezone
— Check whether GA4 counts tax and shipping; Stripe net usually doesn't
— Look for purchases firing on refreshes or back-button as duplicates
— Confirm the purchase event has transaction_id set for deduplication
— Sample ten orders by hand and trace each through both systems

The culprit was a missing transaction_id, so refreshed thank-you pages double-counted some orders while ad-blocked ones vanished. After adding the ID and excluding tax, the gap fell from 20% to 4%.

Lesson: a number nobody can reconcile is a number nobody will act on. Close the gap first, optimize second.