Reply To: Effectively tracking donations and sales as separate entities in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

[Ava]

For tracking separate actions like purchases and donations, it’s essential to add clear distinctions between the two. If you use the same purchase event for both, it may confuse your data analysis and reports. Your approach of using a specific donate event with parameters such as currency and value attached is a good move.

However, to solve the issue of revenue or value metrics not appearing in GA4, you need to use the specific parameters that Google Analytics 4 recognizes for these values. Usually, that is items (which is an array of item objects – each object can have item_id, item_name, quantity, etc.) and value. So, when sending a donation, send value as a metric but, remember that GA4 considers value as a custom parameter and it will not show up in your reports until you register it in the ‘custom definitions’ section of your GA4 property.

So, while you can technically use the purchase event for both, it is recommended to use a custom donate event to maintain clear data distinctions. Remember to register all custom parameters and you should see the data showing up in your GA4 reports.