Case study · Multi-channel · Analytics
Making your MMP, GA4 and billing data agree
Three tools report three different counts of the same paid conversions. A shared definition and a few fixes narrow the gap from 15% to about 3% and cut weekly reporting from two days to two hours.
Illustrative scenario. The company and all figures are hypothetical and show how we’d approach the problem. This isn’t a client result, and your numbers will differ.
- ±15%
- Gap to billing data, before
- about 3%
- Gap to billing data, after
- 2 days to 2 hours
- Weekly reporting time
All figures are hypothetical.
The situation
Imagine a team preparing its weekly numbers. For the same month, the billing system shows 4,000 paid conversions, the mobile measurement partner (MMP) shows 4,600, and GA4 shows 3,400. Every meeting starts with an argument over which number is right, and someone spends two days building a spreadsheet to explain the differences.
Why the tools disagree
| Source | Conversions | Gap to billing | Likely causes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing system | 4,000 | Reference | Records what was actually charged |
| MMP | 4,600 | +15% | Counts trial restarts and renewals as new, and doesn't remove refunds |
| GA4 | 3,400 | -15% | Consent gaps, and purchases made in the app stores never reach the web tag |
None of the tools is broken. They measure different things, and nobody has written down what the team means by "conversion."
The fix
- Write one definition. For example: "first paid charge, net of refunds within 14 days, counted on the charge date in UTC." Billing becomes the reference, and every other tool is measured against it.
- Align the events. Send the MMP separate events for new subscriptions, renewals and refunds, using server-side notifications from the app stores where possible.
- Align the clocks. Set the time zone and reporting currency to match across tools, since these differences alone can move daily numbers.
- Give each tool one job. Billing for revenue, the MMP for campaign attribution, GA4 for web behavior. Each report states which source it uses.
- Automate a check. A daily job compares the sources and flags any gap above a set threshold, so a broken event gets noticed in a day, not at month end.
The result in this scenario
After the changes, the MMP shows 4,080 conversions (2% above billing) and GA4 shows 3,880 (3% below). The gaps won't reach zero, and they don't need to. Once the difference is small, stable and explained, people can stop debating the numbers and start using them. Weekly reporting drops from two days to two hours.
The takeaway
Before buying another analytics tool, write down your definition of a conversion and test each existing tool against it. Most reporting disputes turn out to be definition disputes.