What the documents look like
Franchise fee and deposit settlement centres on funds and breach deductions. It does not carry government filing duties. The working materials are franchise agreements, deposit ledgers, deduction notices, contractual payment schedules and franchise fee invoices. Sources include the finance system, bank statements and store violation records. Typical parties are chain finance staff, the franchise management department and franchisees. Errors tend to surface as fund disputes, franchise litigation and deposit refund conflicts.
These materials often cross roles and periods during an operations handover. Before retrieval is used to support a handover decision, the material's subject, object and validity scope must be identified, and the authorization state of a draft sentence or request must be judged separately. Retrieval returns reference content only. It does not constitute approval, refund or deduction execution. Monthly updates and per-deduction updates affect how fresh a ledger entry is, but they do not change the retrieval mechanics described here.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Search modes are semantic retrieval, full-text retrieval and hybrid retrieval. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF, and result reranking applies a ReRank model for a second ordering. The reference cap is measured in tokens. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. Question optimization performs coreference resolution and question expansion and adds one model call. Reference content is output as an array whose length can be zero, so the output path still runs when nothing is found.
Image retrieval requires corresponding image input and model capability. Reranking requires an available model enabled by configuration. Optional paths shown in the documented flow do not mean every request executes all of them. These capabilities affect recall and ordering only. They do not perform permission or entity isolation. Knowledge bases with different vector models cannot be associated together; the model identifier should be checked first and non-matching bases excluded, with the actual observation recorded.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: the material text to be checked reads "Party A, a certain chain management company, and Party B, a certain franchisee, signed a Franchise Agreement on 1 March 2024, contract number JMF-2024-031. The payment schedule provides that the franchise fee is paid in two instalments, with the first instalment due before 10 April 2024. The deposit ledger records Party B's deposit of RMB 50,000 with status received in full. A deduction notice dated 5 June 2024 states that RMB 2,000 is deducted because Party B breached the display clause, with the reason being store violation record number VG-2024-0601." One draft sentence to be judged reads "Party B's deposit has been refunded and the contract has been terminated." This draft sentence asserts two facts, refund and termination. The material contains no refund record and no termination signature, so the sentence is unsupported.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge base | One franchise settlement knowledge base | This base uses the same vector model; compare model identifiers with other bases and do not associate when identifiers differ |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Contract numbers and deduction reasons contain numbers and proper nouns; compare recalled content under semantic and full-text retrieval |
| Reference cap | Hypothetical starting point 3000 tokens | Ledger and contract passages vary greatly in length; compare whether referenced content is complete at different caps |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point 0.4 | Label relevant and irrelevant samples first, then compare retained content against the fields to be checked |
| Question optimization | Enabled | Handover requests often contain references; compare the subject in the original question and the optimized question for distortion |
| Result reranking | Enabled | Compare rerank scores when candidates are numerous; use them for ordering only, not for permission judgments |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorized execution. In the sample, the draft sentence says the deposit has been refunded. Retrieving the ledger entry "received in full" only shows the receipt status; a refund requires a separate refund record and approval. To check, input the draft sentence, compare the ledger status field with the draft wording, and if the ledger has no refund record, mark the sentence unsupported.
- Treating a pending review as missing authority. In the sample, the deduction notice is pending review. This does not show that the operator lacks deduction authority, and it does not show that the deduction was executed. To check, input the deduction notice and the approval record, compare the review status field, and when the status is pending review, record it as to be verified.
- Associating knowledge bases across vector models. In the sample, the base and another base have different vector model identifiers. They cannot be associated together, and no runtime outcome such as missed recall or redundancy can be inferred. To check, input both identifiers, compare whether the model identifiers match, and if they differ, exclude that base and record the actual observation.
How to verify the setup
- For the draft sentence "Party B's deposit has been refunded and the contract has been terminated," input the sentence and the hypothetical material text, then compare the deposit ledger status field and the termination signature record. If the ledger records only received in full, with no refund record and no termination signature, the draft sentence is unsupported and the evidence gap is recorded.
- For the deduction notice, input the notice text and the approval record, then compare the review status and reason fields. If the status is pending review, record it as to be verified. Do not judge that the deduction was executed, and do not judge that the operator lacks authority.
- For empty-result handling, input the explicit paper input
[]and check whether the downstream design continues along the output path when the reference length is zero. This check verifies only the path's continuity. It does not claim that a fictional rule search necessarily returns[].