What the documents look like
Producer export tax refund offsets domestic sales tax against export refunds in one combined calculation. That structure means order fulfilment and after-sales answers must trace back to specific documents rather than to a general recollection of the account. The working materials for this category include electronic tax bureau records, ERP sales entries, customs electronic information, financial ledgers, the exemption-offset-refund declaration detail schedule, export contracts, sales detail ledgers and export customs declarations. This page addresses citation sources and tracing only within the producer exemption-offset-refund setting, during order fulfilment and after-sales question handling.
The materials update monthly. That cycle affects version checking of documents. It does not change how the retrieval and citation functions on this page are configured.
A citation that names a declaration schedule, a customs declaration number or a contract number can be checked against the underlying document. A statement about payment status, approval status or completion status may have no support in those documents at all. The tracing step exists to separate what the documents record from what a draft sentence asserts.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together. The vector model identifier of each candidate base is checked first, and bases whose identifiers do not match are excluded.
The search node outputs cited content as an array, and the array length may be zero. A zero-length output still passes through the output path. An empty array is a retrieval result, not a workflow error.
The minimum relevance setting takes effect only during semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. It is a filter threshold. It does not act as a permission filter or an entity isolation mechanism, and it does not exclude records belonging to other businesses or records the caller is not authorized to see. Retrieval is not authorization.
RRF is the fusion process applied to results from multiple retrieval paths under hybrid retrieval. It is not a switch that can be turned on or off. Reranking requires a rerank model and must be enabled in the settings. Image retrieval requires image input and corresponding model capability. The optional paths shown in the overall retrieval flow diagram are not all executed on every request.
After retrieval output passes to the answering step, each answer sentence is checked against the cited source text. A fluent answer does not substitute for source evidence, and a model's internal thinking process is not source evidence either.
A hypothetical paper exercise sample is set out here for checking purposes. The source material reads: "Xinyuan Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd., March 2024 exemption-offset-refund declaration detail schedule, export customs declaration number 022024030001, export contract number XY2024-03, sales detail ledger period 3, total FOB value USD 120,000." A draft sentence under review reads: "Xinyuan Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd. completed the exemption-offset-refund declaration for export customs declaration 022024030001 in March 2024 and has received the refund." The subject, period and customs declaration number in the draft sentence correspond to the source material. The refund receipt status is not stated anywhere in the source material.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Only bases related to the declaration detail schedule, export contract, sales detail ledger and export customs declaration | Compare the vector model identifier of each base; exclude any base whose identifier does not match |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Customs declaration numbers and contract numbers are exact queries; combine with semantic recall and fuse the results |
| Minimum relevance | Not enabled at the start | Decide after observing recall results; compare against the number of recalled items with the setting off |
| Result reranking | Not enabled at the start | Confirm a rerank model is available before deciding whether to enable it |
| Citation limit | Controlled by tokens, starting value to be determined | Compare cited content length at different starting values before settling on one |
| Question optimization | Not enabled at the start | The current question contains an explicit declaration number; observe recall with the setting off first |
These values are hypothetical starting points for this exercise. They are not official default values.
Three common errors
- Treating the minimum relevance setting as a permission or entity isolation control. The input is one semantic retrieval request. The comparison is between the threshold setting and the business ownership of returned records. The observable result is that changing the threshold does not change the visibility of records the caller is not authorized to see.
- Associating knowledge bases that use different vector models. The input is two knowledge bases with different vector model identifiers. The comparison is between the model identifiers. The observable result is that the association is rejected or the identifier mismatch is recorded.
- Treating a zero-length citation array from the search node as a workflow error. The input is one search that returned no content. The comparison is between the node output and the downstream handling design. The observable result is that the empty array still passes through the output path.
How to verify the setup
- Input the source material and the draft sentence from the hypothetical exercise sample above. Compare the refund receipt status asserted in the draft sentence against the scope of what the source material records. The observable result is that the receipt status is not supported by the source material and is marked as pending verification.
- Input customs declaration number 022024030001 and contract number XY2024-03 from the hypothetical exercise sample. Compare the content recalled by full-text retrieval against the content recalled by hybrid retrieval. The observable result is that declaration detail schedule or customs declaration records containing those numbers are recalled. Do not assert that the first result is always a match, that every relevant record is recalled, or that an unrelated query returns nothing.
- Input a clearly labelled paper empty result array
[]. Compare the downstream answering step's handling behaviour. The observable result is that the downstream step processes the empty citation set without generating a fabricated source. Do not claim that a search for a fictional rule necessarily returns an empty array.
For each check, the document version used for tracing is recorded alongside the result. Whether a citation is adopted still depends on review against the valid version. Where the source material does not state a fact, the gap is recorded as a gap rather than resolved by inference.