SaaS Analytics Instrumentation Blueprint Checklist

Analytics instrumentation is one of the most frequently skipped steps in early-stage SaaS development — founders track page views, add a Mixpanel snippet, and move on. The result is a dashboard full of data that cannot answer the questions that actually matter: where users drop off, what actions correlate with retention, and which features drive conversion to paid.

This checklist gives technical founders a complete reference for setting up product analytics correctly from the start. Use it before you ship to users, not after you realize the data you need is missing.

Event Taxonomy Checklist ✅

Your event taxonomy is the naming system for all the actions you track. A consistent taxonomy makes queries and funnels easier to build and reduces the drift that happens when multiple engineers add events independently.

Naming Convention

• → Use Object Verb naming: Project Created, Invite Sent, Report Exported — not create_project or projectCreated
• → Use past tense for events (the action has occurred): User Signed Up not Sign Up
• → Use Title Case for event names consistently across the codebase
• → Avoid generic names: Button Clicked is useless without context; Upgrade Button Clicked is specific enough to act on

Core Events Every SaaS Should Track

• → User Signed Up — with signup method (email, Google, SSO)
• → User Logged In — with authentication method
• → Onboarding Step Completed — with step name/number as a property
• → Core Action Performed — your product's primary value-delivering action (name this specifically)
• → Feature Used — with feature name as a property
• → Upgrade Clicked — with source (where in the app the click occurred)
• → Plan Upgraded — with from_plan and to_plan properties
• → Invitation Sent — for collaboration or referral flows
• → Export Performed — with format and trigger context
• → Error Encountered — with error type and context (do not log PII)

Required User Properties

User properties are persistent attributes associated with a user profile in your analytics tool. They allow you to segment event data by user characteristics — comparing power users to churned users, or free plan users to paid plan users.

Identity Properties (set at signup)

• → user_id — your internal UUID, used as the identify() call argument
• → created_at — signup timestamp in ISO 8601
• → signup_method — email / google / sso / invite
• → signup_source — utm_source captured at signup if available

Plan and Account Properties (set at signup, updated on change)

• → plan — free / starter / pro / enterprise
• → plan_started_at — when the current plan started
• → organization_id — for multi-tenant products
• → organization_size — seat count or employee range

Behavioral Properties (updated by analytics tool or your backend)

• → last_seen_at — timestamp of last activity
• → session_count — total sessions to date
• → core_action_count — number of times the core value action has been performed
• → onboarding_completed — boolean, set when all onboarding steps are done

Required Event Properties

Event properties are attributes attached to individual events. A well-instrumented event carries enough context to answer follow-up questions without requiring a database query.

Global Properties (send with every event)

• → user_id — always present for authenticated events
• → organization_id — always present for multi-tenant products
• → plan — current plan at time of event
• → session_id — to group events within a session
• → platform — web / mobile / api
• → app_version — your product version at time of event

Context Properties (add where applicable)

• → source — where in the app the event was triggered (page name, modal, notification)
• → method — how the action was performed (keyboard shortcut, button, drag-and-drop)
• → object_id — identifier for the resource the event relates to
• → object_type — type of the resource (project, document, report)

Tool Setup Checklist

The setup steps below apply to Mixpanel, Amplitude, and PostHog — the three most common choices for early-stage SaaS. PostHog is self-hostable and open-source, making it a strong default for founders with data residency requirements or tight budgets.

Configuration Checklist

• → Use separate projects or write keys for development, staging, and production environments
• → Filter out internal team traffic in production (exclude by IP or user flag)
• → Enable data residency settings if required for GDPR compliance
• → Configure session recording separately from event tracking — ensure PII masking is active
• → Set up a server-side event queue for events that must not be blocked by ad blockers (billing events, conversion events)

Instrumentation Quality Checks

Before shipping instrumentation to production users, run through these quality checks to catch the most common instrumentation failures.

• → Every event has a user_id for authenticated flows — no anonymous event where identity is expected
• → No PII in event property values — email addresses, names, and phone numbers should never appear as property values
• → Identify() is called before track() on every authenticated page load — events should not be attributed to anonymous profiles
• → Events are firing exactly once per user action — duplicate events inflate counts and corrupt funnel metrics
• → Timestamps are in UTC and consistent across frontend and backend events
• → Event names match the approved taxonomy spec — no ad hoc names added during development
• → Server-side events are deduplicated using an insert_id or equivalent idempotency key
• → The analytics SDK is not blocking page load — load asynchronously or defer non-critical tracking calls

Testing Checklist Before Launch

Test your instrumentation the same way you test application features — with a structured test plan, not ad hoc clicking.

• → Create a test user account and walk through every onboarding step — verify each Onboarding Step Completed event fires with the correct step property
• → Perform each core product action and verify the event appears in your analytics tool's live event view within 5 seconds
• → Verify the identify() call fires on login — open your analytics tool's user profile for the test user and confirm user properties are present
• → Complete an upgrade flow and verify Plan Upgraded fires with correct from_plan and to_plan values
• → Simulate an error state and verify Error Encountered fires with no PII in the error message
• → Check that development environment events are not appearing in your production project
• → Verify internal team users are filtered out of your production analytics dashboard

Frequently Asked Questions