Analysis
Account hierarchy
Also called account-property-view.
Account hierarchy is the nesting an analytics tool uses to organize ownership and data: account at the top, properties under it, and views or streams under those. It decides who can see what and where a hit lands.
How it is measured
You read it from the admin screen, not from a report. Count the levels, note which one holds the tracking id, and list the users and their roles at each level. The unit is a container, and the signal that matters is which container a given hit actually landed in.
To confirm the real structure, fire a test hit from a known page and find it in each property that should receive it. A hit that shows in two places means two tags are installed. A hit that shows nowhere means the id on the page does not match any property you own.
Worked example
A regional bakery group has one account with three properties: the retail site, the wholesale portal, and a blog. The blog was set up by a contractor under a personal account, so the group owner sees 41,000 retail sessions and nothing for the blog.
Moving the blog property into the group account takes ten minutes. The blog's last twelve months of history stay behind in the personal account, so the owner exports it first and keeps a note of the gap.
How it differs
An account hierarchy describes the whole tree. A property is one node in that tree, the container for a single site or app. Property answers 'which data stream'; hierarchy answers 'who owns it and how it is grouped'.
Common errors
Putting every client site in one property to save effort. Letting agencies own the account the client pays for. Giving edit rights to everyone because it is faster. Forgetting that deleting a property removes its history.
In practice
Draw the tree on paper this week: account owner, each property, each view, each user with a role. Remove anyone who left the company. Put the account under a company email, not a person's.