> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mixpanel.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Ensuring Data Quality in Mixpanel

Poor data quality leads to misleading insights and wasted effort. The fastest way to prevent this is to treat QA and auditing as a required step in your Mixpanel implementation, not an optional one.

The steps below are the must-do practices for every team to keep insights accurate and trustworthy.

## Always Use Separate Projects

From day one, set up **two projects** in Mixpanel:

* **Development Project** → used for testing event tracking, identity management, and property values
* **Production Project** → where only clean, validated data is ingested

This separation ensures:

1. Developers can experiment safely without polluting your production dataset
2. Data teams have confidence that every event in production has been tested

* ✅ **Do** enforce a rule: *“Nothing hits production until it passes QA.”*
* ❌ **Do not** shortcut by sending test events to production.

## QA Before You Launch

QA is not optional. Every implementation should pass through **two levels of QA** before production:

* Code-Level QA (developer focus)
* User Flows QA (product & data team focus)

### Code-Level QA (developer focus)

This QA allow developers to verify that individual events are firing correctly.

Steps to take:

1. Trigger events in the development app/site.
2. Inspect the network calls or SDK logs.
3. Confirm the following:
   * Event names match your tracking plan
   * Properties have expected values
   * No API errors are returned

#### Enable Debug Mode

Developers should [enable debug mode](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging#enable-debug-mode) to review requests and confirm the payloads sent to Mixpanel.

* Web: view logs in the browser console
* Mobile: view logs in Xcode (iOS) or Android Studio (Android)

Debug Mode surfaces:

* Client-side errors
* API ingestion errors
* Successful ingestion
* Payloads in the ingestion requests

### User Flows QA (product and data team focus)

This QA ensures that end-to-end journeys are tracked correctly.

Steps to take:

1. Walk through real flows in your app (sign up, purchase, upgrade, etc.)
2. Confirm events fire as expected at each step.
3. Check Mixpanel UI:
   * [Events](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging#debugging-with-events) appear in reports
   * [User profiles](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging#debugging-with-user-profiles) are created or updated correctly
   * [Identity stitching](/docs/tracking-methods/id-management/identifying-users-simplified) works when a user moves from anonymous to known

<Note>
  **Pro tip**: Involve non-developers in your User Flows QA. Product managers and data analysts often catch issues developers miss because they think in terms of *business flows* rather than code.
</Note>

Learn more about [QA workflows](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging).

## Audit Regularly

Even if you QA perfectly before launch, things break. Code changes, new features, and third-party integrations can all introduce silent data errors.

**Make Auditing Recurring**

Schedule audits quarterly or alongside product releases to check for:

* Missing or duplicate events
* Unexpected property values
* Identity stitching anomalies (e.g. multiple profiles for the same user)

**Tools to Help**

* [Lexicon](/docs/data-governance/lexicon): to validate event/property naming
* [Events report](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging#debugging-with-events): to spot-test events in real time

<Note>
  **Pro tip**: Treat auditing like regression testing; it is not about fixing what is broken now, but preventing broken data from piling up unnoticed.
</Note>

## Key Takeaways

* **Two projects, always**: Development + Production
* **QA before production**: Run both code-level and user flow QA
* **Use Debug Mode**: Catch ingestion issues instantly
* **Audit often**: Data quality is not set-and-forget

Learn more about [best practices for debugging](/docs/tracking-best-practices/debugging).