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I own multiple affiliate websites and I am currently working on a piece of software that matches clicks and sales to visitors in GA. This allows me to see my earnings, the number of transactions and best advertisers directly in GA rather than having to sum up the different commissions from various networks.

However, sometimes a sale is rejected by an advertiser, for instance if someone returns (some of) the products sold. In these cases, I need to update the sales in GA. I currently use the normal (not enhanced) GA E-commerce plugin where I can easily submit a transaction or (partial) refund with this payload via the measurement protocol:

{v: 1, t: transaction, tid: something, cid: something, ti: xxx, tr: (-)xx, ta: advertiser}

However, every time I issue a refund, GA increases the transaction count and conversion rate, which skews my data. How can I solve this? I've had a look at the enhanced E-commerce plugin, but it seems partial refunds only work when using products and their respective prices, which is information that I simply do not have for every sale.

Thanks in advance.

Jacco Kuiper
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You can't. Even though Google supports negative transactions via their documentation this is not a refund, this is just another transaction (which e.g. means if you select your timeframe so that is encompasses only the original or only the negative transaction your data is just as skewed as before, this works only if both transactions are within the timeframe. Also make sure your negative transaction is attributed to the same channel as your original transaction, or channel based reporting will be off).

Even EEC does not reverse transactions, it stores the refund in a separate field.

Since a proper reversal or removal of transactions would require a massive recalculation of data I do not think this will come anytime soon.

Eike Pierstorff
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  • Okay, thank you. About EEC: Do you know if it's possible to issue a partial refund in EEC without using products? I don't mind seeing a rejected transaction b/c % rejected transactions of total transactions is also an important KPI. But each refund as a separate transaction, is a little over the top. I just want it be one transaction regardless of refunding yes/no. – Jacco Kuiper Oct 25 '17 at 13:34