Installation & Setup
~5 min readInstallation & Setup
dashboardSMASHBOARD for Google Analytics is a web app — there's nothing to install. You sign in with Google, choose a GA4 property, and your dashboards are ready in a couple of minutes.
What you need
- A Google account that has access to at least one Google Analytics 4 property. Viewer access is enough — dashboardSMASHBOARD only reads data.
- A modern web browser.
- No credit card and no API keys.
Sign in with Google
- Go to app.dashboardsmashboard.com and click Sign in with Google.
- Choose the Google account that has access to your GA4 property.
- Review the permissions and click Allow.
dashboardSMASHBOARD asks for read-only access to your Google Analytics data (analytics.readonly) plus your basic Google profile (name, email, picture). It can never create, change or delete anything in your Analytics account. See Security & Data Privacy for the details.
Your Google account is your dashboardSMASHBOARD account — there's no separate password.
Your free trial starts automatically
The first time you sign in, your 14-day free trial of the Solo plan begins. No credit card is needed, and nothing is charged when the trial ends. See Billing & Plans for plans and pricing.
Choose your GA4 property
After you sign in, you'll see the list of GA4 properties your Google account can access. Click the one you want to track.
- The page shows how many properties you've connected out of your plan's limit — for example 0 / 1 properties connected on your Solo plan.
- Plan limits are 1 property on Solo, 5 on Studio, 20 on Agency and 60 on Scale. Properties beyond your limit are shown as Upgrade to add.
- If the list is empty, your Google account doesn't have access to any GA4 property. Ask a property administrator to grant you at least Viewer access in Google Analytics, then refresh the page.
Your dashboards show data for one property at a time — the current property. To switch, click the property name in the top bar and choose a different one. Properties you've already connected can be switched to at any time; connecting a new one counts against your plan limit. When you switch properties, your cards reload with the new property's data.
Set your starting goals
Right after you pick your first property, dashboardSMASHBOARD asks you to set your traffic goals. Each goal is a growth target — for example, "grow sessions by at least 10% this month compared to the period just before." The defaults are sensible starting points; adjust any that don't fit your situation, then click Save my goals (or Skip for now to accept the defaults).
You can change any card's goal at any time from the card's Edit card menu — see Adding and Configuring Cards.
Your first dashboards
Your account starts with four ready-made dashboards — Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization and Retention — with six cards each. See Your First Dashboard.
Data freshness
Cards don't query Google Analytics on every page view. dashboardSMASHBOARD keeps each card's most recent result and refreshes it when it gets old:
| Plan | Card data refreshes at most every |
|---|---|
| Solo, Studio | 15 minutes |
| Agency, Scale | 5 minutes |
The ↻ Refresh button reloads the dashboard, but it shows cached data until the refresh interval has passed. Changing a card's goal or switching properties refreshes the affected cards right away.
Google Analytics itself also has a processing delay — numbers for "today" can keep changing for up to 24–48 hours as Google finishes processing events. dashboardSMASHBOARD shows the numbers exactly as Google Analytics reports them, so you may see small differences if you compare against GA4 at a different moment.
Reconnecting Google
If you revoke dashboardSMASHBOARD's access from your Google Account, or Google otherwise invalidates your connection, your cards show a "not connected" message. To fix it, sign in with Google again (or open Choose property from the top bar and click Reconnect with Google). Do this within 30 days: if Google access stays revoked for 30 days, your account and its data are permanently deleted (see Security & Data Privacy). Reconnecting before then cancels the deletion and keeps your dashboards and goals.
"Google hasn't verified this app"
Google reviews every app that asks for access to Analytics data. Until that review is complete, Google may show a "Google hasn't verified this app" screen when you sign in. This is expected and does not mean anything is wrong. To continue, click Advanced, then Go to dashboardSMASHBOARD (unsafe). Once Google's verification is complete this screen no longer appears.
Signing out
Click Sign out in the top-right corner. You can sign back in with the same Google account at any time and pick up where you left off.
Still need help?