---
title: "About BigQuery prerequisites"
slug: "about-bigquery-prerequisites"
description: "Set up BigQuery as a Supermetrics destination by creating a Google Cloud account, enabling the API, and configuring service account permissions."
updated: 2025-10-15T10:30:25Z
published: 2025-10-15T10:30:25Z
canonical: "docs.supermetrics.com/about-bigquery-prerequisites"
---

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

# About BigQuery prerequisites

Before you can begin using BigQuery as a Supermetrics destination, ensure that you’ve met the prerequisites below.

## Prerequisites

To use the Supermetrics Hub version of BigQuery, you need:

- A Google Cloud account and a Google Cloud project with billing enabled
- BigQuery API enabled
- A custom role with permissions to create BigQuery jobs
- A Google Cloud service account with either of the following roles:
  - Role "BigQuery Admin" for the dataset.
  - Custom role with permissions to create BigQuery jobs
- A service account key
- A dataset to connect to

## Instructions

### **Step 1. Set up Google Cloud account and project**

If you haven’t used Google Cloud and created a project before, you have to create a new Google Cloud account and a Google Cloud project, as well as enable billing for the project.

1. [Create a new Google Cloud account](https://console.cloud.google.com/freetrial?facet_utm_source=google&facet_utm_campaign=%28organic%29&facet_utm_medium=organic&facet_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcloud.google.com%2Fbigquery%2Fdocs%2Fquickstarts%2Fquickstart-client-libraries&facet_id_list=%5B39300012%2C+39300020%2C+39300118%2C+39300195%2C+39300249%2C+39300251%2C+39300301%2C+39300319%2C+39300320%2C+39300325%2C+39300333%2C+39300345%2C+39300354%2C+39300364%2C+39300374%2C+39300410%2C+39300422%2C+39300437%5D&_ga=2.10885879.2118183690.1671606834-1861544218.1671008320).
2. [Create a new Google Cloud project](https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-projects).
3. [Enable billing for the Google Cloud project](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-project#enable_billing_for_a_project).

### Step 2. Enable BigQuery API

Follow these instructions to [enable the BigQuery API](https://console.cloud.google.com/flows/enableapi?apiid=bigquery&_ga=2.246363975.2118183690.1671606834-1861544218.1671008320).

### Step 3. Create a Google Cloud service account with admin role or custom role

****Option 1: Create a Google Cloud service account with admin role****

You need to create a Google Cloud service account to use BigQuery from the Supermetrics Hub. [Follow these instructions to create the service account](https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/service-accounts-create#iam-service-accounts-create-console).

When setting up access permissions for your service account, select the BigQuery Admin role.

****Option 2: Create a Google Cloud service account with the custom role****

1. Create a custom role in the Google Cloud project with all the bigquery.jobs.* permissions. [Follow these instructions to create a custom role](https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/creating-custom-roles).
2. Create a Google Cloud service account to use BigQuery from the Supermetrics Hub. [Follow these instructions to create the service account](https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/creating-managing-service-accounts#iam-service-accounts-create-console). When setting up access permissions for your service account, select the custom role you created.

### Step 4. Generate and download service account key

The service account key is used to connect Supermetrics with a specific BigQuery project and dataset.

Creating the service account key requires a Create Service Accounts (`roles/iam.serviceAccountCreator`) IAM role on the project.

To get the service account key, you should either:

- Ask your administrator to grant you the Create Service Accounts (`roles/iam.serviceAccountCreator`) IAM role on the BigQuery project, and create the service account key yourself.
- Ask your admin to create the service account key and share the key with you.
- Invite your admin to the Supermetrics team, and ask the admin to create the BigQuery connection on the [Destinations page](https://hub.supermetrics.com/destinations) on the Supermetrics Hub.

With the necessary IAM role, follow these steps to create the service account key:

1. Navigate to the [Service Accounts page in Google Cloud IAM](https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/serviceaccounts). Click the email address for the service account that you created.
2. Click **Keys**.
3. Click **Add key**, and then click **Create new key**.
4. Click **Create**. A JSON key file will be downloaded to your computer.
5. Click **Close**.

### Step 5. Create a dataset

You need to create a dataset in BigQuery for your queries to connect to from the Supermetrics Hub.

If you created the Google Cloud service account with a custom role, grant the Data Owner role for the data set to the service account you created.

[Follow these instructions to create a dataset in BigQuery](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/datasets).

## More resources

- [How to configure a BigQuery destination](/v1/docs/how-to-configure-a-bigquery-destination)
- [How to create a destination](/v1/docs/how-to-connect-to-a-data-warehouse-destination)
- [How to create a transfer](/v1/docs/how-to-create-a-transfer)

###