What the documents look like
Dealer rebate calculation happens after sales close, and its working materials are policy definitions and financial outcomes rather than stock positions. The recurring documents are rebate policies, sales achievement sheets, reconciliation statements and red-letter invoices, drawn from ERP sales records, dealer remittances, contract ledgers and the finance system. The cycle runs monthly or quarterly. The most time-consuming steps are reconciling the achievement basis, deducting returned goods, and offsetting by invoice, and a mismatch at any one of these points produces rebate disputes or incorrect revenue recognition.
In order fulfilment and after-sales question answering, channel sales, brand finance and dealer finance confirm the same rebate policy repeatedly: whether a given sales volume counts toward achievement, whether returns have already been deducted from the reconciled amount, and whether a red-letter invoice has been issued. These confirmations depend on traceable citations. A cited passage has to lead back to the policy text, a reconciliation line, or an invoice record.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node outputs cited content as an array, and that array may have a length of zero. When nothing is found, the output path still runs; an empty array does not by itself mean the workflow stopped with an error. Citation tracing requires checking each answer against the cited original text and confirming the citation comes from the currently effective version of the material. The minimum relevance value is a filtering threshold. It does not perform permission or entity isolation, and whether a retrieved result is usable still depends on review against the effective version.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a brand's March 2025 rebate policy states in its original text, "The quarterly achievement rate is calculated on the dealer's net sales amount for the quarter that has been paid and not returned; returned amounts are deducted before the achievement rate is calculated." The reconciliation statement for the same month states, "Dealer A's net sales amount for the quarter is RMB 1.2 million, of which the March return of RMB 80,000 has already been deducted from the net amount." A draft reply reads, "Dealer A's rebate for this quarter is calculated on the full RMB 1.2 million; returns do not affect the achievement rate." This draft sentence conflicts with the deduction basis in the policy text and must be sent back for reconciliation.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Assumed trial starting point for this page | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Rebate policy base and reconciliation material base | Both bases must use the same vector model to be associated together; check the vector model identifier first and exclude any that does not match |
| Search mode | Hybrid search | Policy clauses contain identifiers and proper nouns; hybrid search combines semantic and keyword matching |
| Citation limit | Assumed trial starting point of 3000 tokens for this page | Intended to hold policy text and reconciliation fragments; adjust after comparing with the full length of a single policy document |
| Minimum relevance | Assumed trial starting point of 0.4 for this page | Filters low-relevance fragments; adjust after comparing whether cited text traces back to a policy clause |
| Result reranking | ReRank enabled | Second-pass ordering when candidates are numerous; enabled according to settings, and not enabled when no rerank model is configured |
| Question optimization | Enabled for multi-turn follow-ups | Coreference resolution can complete expressions such as "this return"; a single clear question may leave it off |
These are implementation checks and documented settings, not official defaults. The token and relevance figures are starting points chosen for this page's exercise, and each is compared against the actual length or traceability of the material in use.
Three common errors
- Treating retrieval output as an authorization result. Retrieving the original rebate policy text only shows the material can be cited; it does not show that a return deduction has passed finance review or that a red-letter invoice has been issued. The check is to compare the cited text with the currently effective policy version and observe whether the citation comes from the current version.
- Treating an empty citation array as a business conclusion. When the search node outputs an array of length zero, the workflow continues. Use an explicit paper input to check the downstream design and observe whether the downstream step provides a fallback notice; do not infer from this that a particular rebate does not exist.
- Forcing association of knowledge bases with different vector models. Bases with different vector models cannot be associated together. Check each base's vector model identifier, exclude those that do not match, and record what is actually observed; do not run a cross-model search to compare missed recalls.
How to verify the setup
- Input the policy text and reconciliation text from the hypothetical exercise sample above, and compare the draft reply "calculated on the full RMB 1.2 million" with the policy wording "returned amounts are deducted before the achievement rate is calculated." If the reply matches the policy text and the citation traces back to the policy clause, the condition is met; if the reply keeps the full-amount wording, send it back for reconciliation.
- Input a follow-up containing only "how is this return calculated," and compare whether the search terms after question optimization have been completed with the dealer and the period. If the completed terms retrieve the policy deduction clause, the condition is met; if the search terms still lack the subject and the citation is an empty array, record it as pending verification.
- Input a handover request asking to confirm that a red-letter invoice has been issued, and compare the request status with the finance system record. If only a retrieved invoice template exists and no issuance record is present, record it as unsupported; if an issued red-letter invoice record exists with matching subject, period and amount, the condition is met.
These checks describe expected observations. They do not state that any test, deployment or approval has taken place. Where the material does not record a fact, the gap remains a gap: a pending request is not an approval, an offered option is not execution, and an unsigned termination is not a completed termination.