Guide · GA4 e-commerce

How to set up GA4 purchase tracking

If GA4 shows traffic but no purchases or revenue, your store isn't sending e-commerce events. Here's what GA4 needs, how to set it up on common platforms, and how to check it works.

The four events a store needs

GA4 doesn't know what a sale is until your site tells it. It does that with recommended e-commerce events. Purchase is the one that matters most; the other three give you the shopping funnel.

Event Sent when Must include
view_item A product page is viewed currency, value, items
add_to_cart A product is added to the cart currency, value, items
begin_checkout The shopper starts checkout currency, value, items
purchase The order is confirmed transaction_id, currency, value, items

items is a list of the products involved, each with at least an item_id or item_name. Without it, GA4's product reports stay empty even when revenue is recorded.

Set it up on your platform

Shopify

Install Shopify's Google & YouTube app, connect your Google account and choose your GA4 property. It sends all four events, including purchase from the order status page. If you previously pasted a gtag snippet into your theme or checkout settings, remove it once the app is connected, or orders will be counted twice. For anything custom, use Shopify's Customer events (custom pixels) rather than theme code, because checkout pages no longer run theme scripts.

WooCommerce

Install the official Google Analytics for WooCommerce extension and enter your GA4 measurement ID (it starts with G-). It sends the e-commerce events from product, cart, checkout and order-received pages. Turn off any other plugin that also sends GA4 events, so each event is sent once.

Custom site or Google Tag Manager

Send each event when it happens, with the parameters above. With gtag.js, the purchase event on your order confirmation page looks like this: 

gtag("event", "purchase", {
  transaction_id: "T-10482",   // unique per order — GA4 drops duplicates
  currency: "USD",             // without it, revenue is recorded as 0
  value: 128.00,               // order total you want counted as revenue
  tax: 9.60,
  shipping: 6.00,
  items: [
    { item_id: "SKU-THROW-01", item_name: "Linen Throw Blanket", price: 89.00, quantity: 1 },
    { item_id: "SKU-MUG-02",   item_name: "Stoneware Mug",       price: 19.50, quantity: 2 }
  ]
});

With Tag Manager, push the same object to the dataLayer under an ecommerce key and fire a GA4 Event tag named purchase with "Send e-commerce data" enabled.

Check it's working

  1. In GA4, open Admin → DebugView, or install the Google Tag Assistant extension and enable debug mode.
  2. Place a test order (use a discount code or your platform's test payment mode).
  3. Confirm purchase appears with a transaction_id, currency and value, and that its items are listed.
  4. Wait 24–48 hours, then check Reports → Monetization → E-commerce purchases. Standard reports lag behind DebugView.

Why GA4 shows zero purchases

  • No purchase event at all. Common after a theme change, a checkout upgrade, or switching apps.
  • Revenue is 0 but purchases aren't. The event is missing currency, or value is sent as text with a currency symbol.
  • Checkout on another domain. If checkout runs on a payment provider's domain and the confirmation page never loads on yours, the event never fires. Fire it from a page you control, or from the platform's server-side integration.
  • Consent banner blocking tags. If GA4 waits for consent that's never given, purchases go unrecorded. Check your consent mode setup.
  • Duplicate transaction IDs. GA4 keeps only one purchase per transaction_id; reusing a placeholder ID drops real orders.
  • Sudden zero days. If purchases drop to zero while traffic stays normal, tracking broke that day. The GA4 Instant Dashboard flags these automatically.

Then see what's working

Once purchases are flowing, the free GA4 e-commerce dashboard shows revenue, conversion rate by channel and device, the shopping funnel and your top products, with plain-English findings — in about ten seconds, in your browser.