Last Updated: May 20, 2022

Recurring revenue analytics is the analysis of the sales generated through recurring products/services. The recurring revenue is often collected in the form of subscription payments.

Since subscription payments (other than the first payment) are not triggered by a user’s actions, they need to be tracked server-side.

When a user first signs up, assign him a unique user id. You can use the login id as a user id. Just make sure that the id does not contain Personally Identifiable data like name, email address, IP address, etc.

Any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a unique device identifier, if such an identifier cannot be reset) is Personally Identifiable data.

If you upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual, your Google Analytics account can be terminated, and you may lose your Google Analytics data as this is against Google Terms of Service.

The user id is used, to sum up the recurring revenue by a user. When a user makes the first initial purchase you can set a unique user id for him and note down his transaction ID. For second and subsequent purchases, send transaction data (with unique transaction ID) to Google Analytics via measurement protocol whenever you process payment.

When a subscription stops then stop sending the transaction data via measurement protocol for a particular user.

About measurement protocol

The measurement protocol is a set of rules which your application must follow in order to send raw hit data directly to the Google Analytics server.

Through this protocol, you can collect and send raw user interaction data (hits) directly to the GA server from any device/system which can be connected to the internet. This device/system can be a smartphone, tablet PC, digital appliances (washing machine, coffee machine, slot machine), point of purchase systems, etc.

However, you need to format your data according to the measurement protocol before you can send it to the Google Analytics server. So for example, if you want to send data from a cash counter machine, coffee machine or slot machine then you first need to format the data according to the measurement protocol. Without such formatting, you can’t send data to GA.

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In order to make an HTTP request to the GA server (for sending the raw hit data directly), you need to format your HTTP request according to the measurement protocol. This formatted HTTP request is called the measurement protocol request.

Here is what the measurement protocol request looks like:

The measurement protocol request is made up of: user-agent, transport and payload data:

Payload data is the data you send to the Google Analytics server using the measurement protocol. In other words, the payload data is the data that has been formatted according to the Measurement Protocol.

Following is an example of payload data:

v=1&tid=UA-123456-2&cid=36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b&t=pageview&dp=%2Fhome

The payload data resembles a URL query string.

Payload data is made up of multiple parameters. Each parameter is made up of ‘key = value’ pairs. Each parameter is separated from another parameter via & character.

Since each parameter is made up of ‘key = value‘ pairs, so each ‘key=value’ pair is separated by the ‘&’ character.

Syntax of payload data:

parameter1&parameter2&parameter3

or

key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3

Example of payload data:

v=1&tid=UA-123456-2&cid=36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b&t=pageview&dp=%2Fhome

Here v, tid, cid, t and dp are called the keys.

‘1’, ‘UA-123456-2’, ‘36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b’, ‘pageview’ and ‘%2Fhome’ are called the values.

For example, the following are the parameters for measuring purchases via measurement protocol:

Source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide

Click on the link ‘view this hit in the measurement protocol hit builder‘ to see what this hit actually looks like.

All values you sent via measurement protocol to GA, must be both UTF-8 encoded and URL encoded. For example, / is encoded to %2F

If the values are not encoded correctly then they will be replaced with the Unicode replacement character xFFFD

Note (1): You can learn more about URL encoding from here: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp

Note (2): All protocol parameters must be set on the same line. They should not have any spaces between them. Comments are not allowed in protocol parameters.

The measurement protocol supports the following data types for the values in the ‘key = value’ pairs of the payload data:

1. Integer – used to represent a number
2. Text – used to represent a string
3. Boolean – used to represent a boolean value (true or false)
4. Currency – used to represent the total value of a currency in up to 6 decimal points.

Transport defines where and how to send the payload data.

Following is an example of transport:

POST http://www.google-analytics.com/collect

Transport is made up of:

#1 GET/POST method – which defines how to send the payload data

#2 Location of the GA server – which defines where to send the payload data

#3 URL endpoint – this is used to define whether a single or multiple hits should be sent to the GA server or whether to send the payload data to the measurement protocol validation server.

There are rules regarding which parameters can be sent together and which parameters can’t be sent together. There are rules regarding the length and format of parameters.

Each parameter has a specific type that requires a particular format.

Each payload data must contain a valid hit type. Each hit type must have its own set of required parameters set.

For more details, regarding these rules, refer to Measurement Protocol Parameter Reference: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters?hl=en

You can get a complete list of all of the measurement protocols from here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters

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You can send payload data by either using the GET method or POST method.

Google recommends using the POST method, as then you can send larger payload data to the GA server. The location of the GA server is https://www.google-analytics.com. This is where we send the payload data.

The payload data need to be URL encoded if you are making an HTTP POST request to the GA server.

The size of Payload data, if you are making an HTTP POST request to the GA server can be a maximum of 8191 Bytes. However, if you make an HTTP GET request to the GA server, then the size of payload data cannot be more than 2000 Bytes.

Write a script to make the following similar HTTP POST request to the GA server in order to send the payload data:

User-Agent: user_agent_string

POST https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?payload_data

Use measurement protocol hit builder to validate hits: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/hit-builder/

Note: GA hit builder uses only one URL endpoint, /collect

To use the measurement protocol, you need to do the following three things:

#1 Ask your developer to write an application (program) that can pull data from your desired data source (could be your database/backend):

#2 Your application must convert the retrieved data into the payload data according to the measurement protocol:

#3 Your application must make an HTTP POST request to the endpoint (Google Analytics server) in order to send the payload data to the GA server. The HTTP request should be made up of user agent, transport and payload data:

When GA receives the HTTP request from your application, it tries to process the payload data in the HTTP request. If GA successfully processes the payload data then its server will send 2XX response code back to your application:

If GA is not successful, in processing the payload data, then its server does not send any error code back to your application.

As you create monthly invoices for our customers, you could have a request sent through the measurement protocol which specifies the invoice details as soon as the payment comes in as successfully processed.

Recommendation regarding updating the original transaction

Do not update the original transaction every month. Assign a unique transaction ID for each new transaction for a particular user.

If you update the original transaction with new value then you won’t be able to see individual transactions for a particular user over time.

If you don’t assign a unique transaction ID for each new transaction for a particular user then you will have duplicate transaction issues.

You can segment the data by user id and should be able to see all of the transactions for a particular user in the user explorer report in the user id view:

In addition to that, you can create a custom dimension and pass user id value to it. Then you create a user id custom segment. 

By doing that you can segment any GA report by user id custom segment and do detailed analysis for a particular user.
If some of your customers book well in advance, say 2 months in advance then send transaction data via measurement protocol after 2 months to maintain the accuracy of the sales data.

Record sales only on the day of the actual sales whether the sale is user-generated or generated by you in response to billing.

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Recommendation for refunds, chargebacks, and unsuccessful payments

When sending transaction data via measurement protocol, add a negative amount for the sales. This is known as reversing the transaction.

When you reverse a transaction in Google Analytics, it does not remove it. GA simply deduct a particular amount from the revenue total. So what is removed is the revenue/sales associated with the reversal transaction. No other information associated with the transaction is removed.

For example,

Let’s say User ‘A’ placed an order of $200 on Monday.

Let’s say the total website sales on Monday were $500.

Now if you reverse the transaction on Monday, then the total sales amount for Monday would be reported to be: $500 – $200 = $300

If you reverse the same transaction on say Tuesday, then the total sales amount for Monday would remain $500

the total sales amount for Tuesday would be: Total website sales for Tuesday – $200

So if the original transaction occurred on Monday and you reversed it on Tuesday then make sure that you are analyzing a date range that includes both Monday and Tuesday. Google, in fact, recommends doing the reversal on the same day as the original transaction.

Note: Both the original and reversal transactions will be included and reported in the transaction count.

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