What the documents look like
Franchise fee and deposit settlement deals with money and breach deductions. It does not handle government filing. The working materials are franchise fee invoices, deposit ledgers, deduction notices and contract payment schedules. They come from finance systems, franchise contracts, bank statements and store violation records. During an operations handover these materials decide who may view, cite and continue processing; citation tracing requires every conclusion to return to specific source text. Monthly settlement and each deduction set the update rhythm, and a handover checks each item against the material version.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
Retrieval or a form collecting values does not constitute authorized execution. The knowledge base search node outputs cited content as an array whose length may be zero; an empty array means the output path still runs and does not mean the workflow terminated with an error. Associated knowledge bases require the same vector model, so a check first compares vector model identifiers and excludes those that do not match, without running cross-model retrieval to compare missed recalls. The minimum relevance value is a filter threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF and is part of the retrieval process, not a switch.
Hypothetical drill sample: source text one reads "Franchisee A applied in March 2025 to refund the deposit; the franchise management department issued a deduction notice on 3 April 2025 for a February 2025 display violation; the amount is not stated." Source text two reads "The same franchise contract payment schedule shows the second installment of the franchise fee for 2025 is due by 10 May 2025; as of 30 April 2025 the status is not yet due." The draft sentence to be judged is "Franchisee A has completed the deposit refund and the deduction has been executed." The subject, object and status in this sentence conflict with the source text: the source only shows a deduction notice was issued, states no amount and no execution result, and the deposit refund remains at the application stage.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Starting value for this hypothetical trial | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Only franchise contract libraries with matching vector model identifiers | Compare vector model identifiers across libraries and exclude those that do not match |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Compare candidate coverage against semantic retrieval and full-text retrieval separately |
| Citation limit | Set for this trial at 2000 tokens | Compare cited content length and completeness against other values |
| Minimum relevance | Set for this trial at 0.5 | Compare the number of items remaining after filtering against higher and lower values |
| Result reranking | Enabled | Compare candidate ordering against the disabled state and confirm the model is available |
| Citation output handover | Citation array passed to the answering step | Check each answer item against the cited source text |
Three common errors
- Treating an issued deduction notice as an executed deduction. Input is source text one; compare the stated reason, amount and execution records. When the notice states no amount, the execution status is unsupported.
- Treating a deposit refund application as a completed refund. Input is source text one; compare the application date with refund completion records. Without a completion record the item remains pending verification.
- Treating a not-yet-due franchise fee as overdue. Input is source text two; compare the due date with the current date. A status of not yet due does not constitute overdue.
How to verify the setup
- Input source text one and the draft sentence; compare the draft phrase "has completed the deposit refund" with the application status in the source. When the source has no refund completion record the phrase does not hold, and the evidence gap is recorded.
- Input source text two; compare the due date of 10 May 2025 with the current date of 30 April 2025. When the status is not yet due, an overdue judgment does not hold.
- Input an explicit paper citation array [] and check whether the downstream answering step continues along the empty-citation path, without claiming that retrieval under a fictional rule necessarily returns [].
The public technical facts checked for this feature (used to identify related content in the documents; the body is written independently rather than copied as a fixed five-row table): [["Associated knowledge bases", "The knowledge base search scope first checks the selected knowledge bases and material versions; only the same vector model may be associated together."], ["Cited content output", "The search node outputs a citation array whose length may be zero; an empty array does not mean the workflow terminated with an error."], ["Citation input handover", "Check whether retrieval output is passed to the answering step and verify each answer item against the cited source text."], ["Citation display check", "Use a traceable sample to check source display; do not replace source evidence with thinking process or answer fluency."], ["Material timeliness check", "Test the source with current and historical document versions; whether a citation is adopted still requires review against the valid version."]]