Conversion discrepancy — the 6-step reconciliation audit

Conversion discrepancy — the 6-step reconciliation audit

Tracker shows 100 conversions, network shows 130. Run this in order before you blame anyone.

— Align the time window first. Tracker counts by click time, network by conversion time. Pull both on the same conversion-time basis or you compare different cohorts.
— Check the timezone. Your tracker in UTC and the network in the advertiser's local time creates a phantom daily gap. Normalize both.
— Audit postback delivery. Pull tracker logs for postbacks received versus the network's conversion count. The difference is failed or never-sent postbacks.
— Check dedup. If the network fires duplicate postbacks and your tracker dedups them, the network number is inflated, not yours. Confirm which side counts duplicates.
— Inspect orphan conversions. Postbacks with an unknown click-id logged but unattributed. These are real conversions your tracker could not match, usually a click-id pass-through break.
— Check rejected and held statuses. The network may count pending leads you only count on approval. Compare like statuses only.

Document which step closed the gap. The same discrepancy on the same source next month is the same root cause.

Save this SOP. Run it whenever counts diverge by more than 5%.